The journey continues...

Excited Nicki is excited!

Once we'd recovered, Nicki and I set off to explore more of the South Island. We debated various forms of transportation, but ultimately decided upon the InterCity bus service. Our first destination was Christchurch. This is an interesting city to explore. It is still very much under construction, there are cranes dotting the skyline in every direction. We figured two days would suffice for exploring and hitting up the museums/galleries/botanical gardens/street art that we were interested in seeing.


We stayed at the Jailhouse Accommodation, which, as you may have guessed, used to be a prison. There's once cell which has be preserved with the artwork by the last inmate to stay there, and they have another one set up as an example, and another that's just spooky with a hole in the floor... possibly for solitary confinement... I'm not too sure. Definitely one of the more interesting backpackers.

ChCh is a city of contrast, while there are a number of structures still awaiting repairs, piles of rubble to be moved with, and the leaning tower of Police, there is a great deal of street art, statues, art installations and pockets of green all around the city centre. We spent a good part of our day tracking down as many of these as possible. I found the city to be very draining, almost as if it was absorbing my energy to use towards its own healing. Very strange feeling. But I'm sure it feels good to see, periodically, how repairs are completing and progress is being made to get the city functioning again.

... plus there are robot chicken type stickers up on a few different buildings.

The Re:Start mall is made up of stores in shipping containers

  As the day went on, the sun came out, and we explored the botanical gardens. Autumn was beginning to show in the leaves, which made for an especially beautiful visit.

 Nicki and I also managed to get into the museum just before closing time... How could we resist hopping onto a penny-farthing. (Even without proper parental supervision. Mwahahahaha)

Da boids!

 Our next destination was Oamaru, in the hopes that we'd catch sight of those delightfully adorable and sometimes elusive Blue Penguins. The town is full of Victorian style buildings, which reminded me a lot of Melbourne. We stayed at a small YHA called The Red Kettle. A house that was larger than it looked and had a toasty warm lounge. We refused to pay to see wild life, as it seemed stupid, and instead opted to get a couple of (much cheaper) warm drinks and test our luck by sitting on the sea-side patio of the Portside Restaurant. We encountered another hopeful-penguin-viewer, however she left before the little fellow showed himself. I think she left about 2 minutes before the little cutie hopped up on the beach and walked right past us. Unfortunately it was too dark to take a picture, but I assure you, we saw one! We saw a second (or perhaps the same one again... it's hard to tell in the dark, plus they all kinda look alike) penguin during the walk back to the hostel. Pleased with ourselves, we warmed up in the lounge by the fire before heading off to bed.

South Island is fulla hipsters?

Our bus wasn't due until midday, so we spent our morning exploring the town. I went into the Steampunk HQ and checked out all the wacky things they had going on in there. Mostly just strange things welded together, but there was a cool mirror room, which, when photographed using the pano function on my iphone, made cool shot.

 

Once I was done playing in the HQ, I went for a walk around town, and returned to the waterfront where I'd photographed the penny-farthing the night before to see what else I'd missed.

Next stop: Dunedin!AKA Edinburg 2: electric boogaloo. While in the collage town of Dunedin (pron: Duh-NI-din), we stayed at Central Backpackers, and were pleasantly surprised by how nice it was. The first thing we did was to check out the Street Art Trail. Great stuff.

 

The following day we decided to check out tunnel beach, which was fairly easy to reach by public transit. The tunnel itself was carved so that some rich lady could get down to the beach below. I may be over simplifying the story just a wee bit... but maybe not. ;) Still, a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon. The walk back up the hill was a bit of a bitch, but, considering we didn't have our giant packs on our backs this time, it wasn't too terrible. Actually, compared to that, it was cake.

The next destination was Queenstown. This was to mark a pause in our travels together, for Nicki and I. She was going to head to Wanaka straight away to get a jump on the job market at the ski resorts in the area, and I wanted to treat myself to a boat tour of one of the sounds, as I'd heard really good things about them from Daniela's friend while I was staying on the farm. In the meantime, we lived it up in Q-town, walking up Queenstown hill, then along the lake before a celebratory pint at the Mac's pub on the waterfront. There was also the manditory stop at Fergburger for post-hill-walk-lunchie-munchies. I had the Sweet Bambie (venisen burger) and it was awesome. I think, if I find myself in Queenstown again, I shall have to try the Chief Wiggum.

 

 A beautiful end to a beautiful couple of weeks with an excellent travel buddy...

 ...don't worry, we caught up again in Wanaka. ;)

... and I snapped a picture of this brocure while I was in ChCh to remind myself to look it up, and, instead, I came across it while typing this up *after* I'd already be to the hostel and stayed in the structure pictured. The Stargazer is one of the most comfortable places I've slept during my entire time in NZ. Well, actually, my bed in Japan was pretty crappy, so, one of the best places I've slept in the past 3 years, now that I think about it.