New Zealand Day 1: I’m sleep deprived, but I’m in New Zealand!

For Spring Break, Brittany, Mary, and I went to New Zealand. The process of getting there was quite lengthy (see picture). We left Hobart about 11 am on Friday and flew to Melbourne, where we had a 6 hour layover. Then we flew to Auckland, New Zealand, and spent the hours between midnight and 6 am in the airport. I now have my first sleeping in an airport experience, which wasn’t too terrible but didn’t really result in much sleep. We got into Christchurch at about 8 am on Saturday, wanting nothing but a hot shower and a bed to sleep on.

Which of course meant that our hostel wouldn’t let us check in until 2 pm, thwarting our plans of resting. So, we decided to explore Christchurch, the South Island’s biggest city with a population of 400,000. Christchurch is very British (see phonebooth), as New Zealand is a Commonwealth of the UK just like Australia.

We wandered around and found the Christchurch Arts Centre (above), an old school that had been converted into many specialty shops. One was a weaving shop, so we all learned how to use a loom (above). Outside of the buildings was an open-air market, complete with street performers like those fake statue guys (above).

Then we visited the Canterbury Museum, a free museum that was really cool. We learned about Maori history, the history of the indigenous people of New Zealand. The Maori actually immigrated from islands near Hawaii many thousands of years ago. How they survived that ocean crossing in canoes I’m not really sure. The museum had lots of Maori woodcarvings, which I impersonated (above). It had interactive things like a huge bike that I sat on (above) and a stagecoach that Brittany and Mary pretended robbers had just jumped on top of (above). There was a special exhibit called “Around the World in 30 Lounges,” which had 6 living rooms decorated like they would be in different countries. The countries rotate on a weekly basis, and when we were there we saw Romanian, Chilean, and Kurdish living rooms (above). Like any good museum, it was home to a dino skeleton (above).

Then we went to the Botanical Gardens (Christchurch is known as the “City of Gardens” because there are so many). We saw huge trees (above), pretty flowers (above), a lily pond (above), and a UFO (above). Apparently this UFO was a prototype for futuristic housing that never caught on. Weird.

We finally checked into our hostel and went to bed (somewhere around 7-8 pm). Our real adventure began the next day.