Arriving in Christchurch, we made our way to the Argyl motel, one of the numerous motels and hotels that line the big, central downtown Hagley park. Driving in to the centre it struck us that most of the town appeared to be suburb with very little commercial town centre feel. This is partly because of all the great green spaces and partly because the suburbs really do encroach quite closely on the small centre of town.
The huge park in the centre of Christchurch, Hagley, sprawls across 164 hectares and is adjacent to the Christchurch Botanical Gardens and Museum. This park can provide hours of entertainment for next to nothing. There are huge trees of all sorts, a beautiful rose and dahlia garden, lovely creeks crossed by quaint bridges and a childrens play area, tennis courts and wading pool for families. Our guys loved all of this and had to be literally dragged off into the historic town centre to do a little sight seeing and have lunch.
Much of the town centre is still cordoned off while repairs and rebuilding continue. The evidence of the quake can be seen in displaced church spires and open-faced building shells. But walking next to the old centre we came across a novel attraction - a temporary shopping and cafe zone set up in brightly painted shipping crates. In fact, many people like this area so mch that some locals are petitioning to keep this in place once the old centre building work is finished.
As we were strolling around the shipping crate area, we were called inside a cafe to participate in a Lego event by the Danish company in charge of re-design work for the town centre. They wanted feedback from all sorts of people and were especially interested in ideas from the younger generations. We joined the children in building an ideal town centre section each based on a square green lego base. Mine featured a home surrounded by water and had a very basic hydrodynamic mechanism to raise and lower the main floor for storage and other uses. We each took turns explaining our site to the filming crew who will compile the documentary footage to display later in the year.
The first days' drive took us past some beautiful lakes, where families were boating and swimming. Just further on we encountered glacial rivers emptying into the ocean. These were the first glacial waters we'd seen and we were shocked by the almost fluorescent aquamarine blue hue of the water. Even the boys took time out from iTouches to be enchanted by these scenes.
Our first overnight stay was in Fox Glacier town. We were able to see the glaciers and white tipped mountains as we neared the area. The fresh air and all of the travel had us asleep quickly the first night. We wanted to take a helicopter tour of Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, but the first few days absolutely threw down rain and there was little respite.
Duing the clearest point, we went to nearby Lake Matheson and walked around the lake. Lake Matheson is famous for its postcard images of glacier mountains mirrored into mirror smooth lake water . The walk around the lake reminded me a bit of the blue ridge mountains along Tennessee and North Carolina, making me feel a bit homesick. The view of the glaciers in the lake, above and beyond expectations from postcards was breathtaking and so gorgeous!
By the following day, driving through on-and-off rain and with 3 boys beginning to shout feelings of boredom and fighting with one another, we began to rethink driving around the country in a week plan. We had just started feeling so smug, looking at each other with wise eyes, saying how calm and grown-up our family was becoming. But we had spoken too soon, and we haven't really mastered the art of road tripping with 3 boys. We're still as dumbfounded as we ever were! Still, in moments of stopping the car and clambering around woods, lakes and seashores we did all have a laugh here and there and each person enjoyed something about our stops in their own way.
Along the way, we came across some gorgeous seaside areas - our favourite being the estuary where Ship Creek glacial waters flow into the ocean. Huge old tree trunks and ghostly driftwood remains scattered across beige and grey pebbles. Even though the beaches lay just off the main road down the Western Coast, they were practically deserted, allowing us to feel as if this beautiful zone was created just for us. Schools of dolphins put on an aerobatic display, frolicking all along the waters edge - not more than 10 meters out! The boys immediately clambered across the pebbles and found sword, bow and arrow shaped sticks and commenced at playing battle. So much for peace and quiet ... but even with WWIII raging in the background, there was no missing the pleasure of this location.
During the rainy days we visited a museum in Franz Joseff claiming to have the only natural kiwi display availalblle and we stumbled inside to have a look. The 2 kiwis in their nocturnal display were fascinating to watch. Andy went back inside that area numerous times and we enjoyed watching them root about in the dark rooms, searching the ground for dinner. Along with this display, a few interactive glacier displays provided interesting facts on the composition of glaciers and icebergs, naming all those parts we never knew had names before - the tongue, the hood,...
The rain would stop and return throughout the day and as the rain would diminish, we would stop the car at beauty spots, something there is no shortage of in the West Coast! Two of my favourite stops on the road were the Three Pools (of glacial water) and Thunder Falls. Each of these spots was interesting and beautiful enough to even make 3 boys want to get out and explore. It would have been blissful to camp out at one of these beautiful spots, though a bit rainy as the West Coast receives more rainfall per year than any other area on the island. Also, there are some of the worst mosquitoes or gnats I've encountered anywhere. You'd swipe them off your arm only to look back in a few seconds and there would be tens of them all relocated there again!1
Rain continued on and off and on and off ... but we managed to find some indoor fun as we paused in Lake Wanaka, home of Puzzling World... what great find for a rainy day - well, for any day really. As the name indicates, this is the place for people who like puzzles. Outside there is what is claimed locally as the Worlds Biggest Outdoor Maze, inside are illusion rooms - such as one where you appear taller at one end of the room and shorter at the other and another in which facial moulds of famous people are placed in a wall so that all of the faces turn to watch you, whichever direction that you move in. Probably the favourite part for my family was the large dining area where each table is topped with several puzzling games. We each sat mesmerised by one puzzle or another for ages. Great way to spend a drizzly day.
Lake Wanaka itself was a very sweet village - actually the first real town that we had passed through since leaving Christchurch a few days earlier. The other 'towns' on the route had consisted of little more than a handful of motels, possibly with a petrol station and some cafes/restaurants. Lake Wanaka had a lovely ambiance with a lived-in, local feel and we thoroughy enjoyed the atmostphere with warm and quirky locals, good food and tasty beer.
As we drove onwards and into the mountainous glacier territories, the scenery changed to include snow-topped mountain peeks looming in the distance. Old car shows must have been underway somewhere as we found ourselves driving in and out of antique show cars. We hoped to catch up the destination of these cars, maybe in Mt Cook, but we never saw them again!
Moving northwards to Mount Cook and Lake Tekapo, weather changed for our last few days. By the time we reached Mount Cook, we were able to tour Lake Tasman , viewing and touching icebergs. That was a thrilling experience - the smaller ice chunks that broke off into the water were crystal clear and completely un-polluted. The icebergs varied in size and were of difffferent ages, some very new, dense and blue, others white-grey with the ice having become infused with air and spilling out internal gravel that the iceberg hd been travelling with. The zodiac style boat took us as safely near the glacier terminal wall as possible ... underneath the surface of the water a large amount of ice waited to break free and float to the surface as a huge iceberg - something that happens every few months or so and is great to see apparently, but dangerous to be near, thus we remained back at a respectful distance.
Our final leg of the car journey had us stop nearby in Lake Tekapo. Like Lake Wanaka, another unbelievaby blue and clear glacially-fed lake surrounded by a community of warm, outdoorsy folks. Both towns reminded me a lot of Twin Peaks sets.
Lake Tekapo had a lovely and very picturesque little church sitting on the beach just ouside of the homes and small businesses. All of the churches wed seen on our car journey around the island were small one-room cabin style places, but there were plenty of them. Actually, houses, churches and most buildings seem to stay on the small side. Strange given that there is so much land to use, that the homes and churches might not reflect this by sprawling out across the properties or up into 2nd or 3rd levels. But this is not the way, here it is a place where the living spaces seem to be secondary to the enjoyment of nature.
We finished our car journey back in Christchurch just as we feared we were about to kill the children, or vice-versa. We all seemed to have grown a bit feral in our time in captivity. It was with a great sigh that we parked the 8-seater at our old Argyl hotel in Christchurch. Only then did we discover that our passports had not been returned to us by the Thai embassy in Wellington where we left them to process our 6 week visas to Thailand. There had been trouble with the form of payment and rather than contact us on any of the methods left for them, they simply contacted our old hotel who had no idea where we were at the time. So Justin set off alone on an day trip to Wellington to retrieve our passports - hopefully stamped with Thai visas!
The boys and I took this day alone as a time to visit an open-range wildlife park just outside of Christchurch. It's called Orana Wildlife Park. Being a school day, we were practically the only folks at the park and Andy kept saying he couldn't believe we had a whole zoo to ourselves, how cool!
I bought tickets for Andy and Ben to have big cat encounters with the lions and tigers during the day. Sam was understandably very upset but didn't meet the age or height requirement for either, so he had to settle for a small cudddly tiger toy instead, which I thought was quite generous!
We made our way to watch Andy and Ben appear through a gate into a lion compound, enclosed in a steel cage in the back of a pickup truck. Big lions and lionesses jumped onto the cage and climbed around it, accepting bits of raw meat poked out through the mesh. The boys were mesmerised inside and didn't seem to know quite where to begin to look. Fair enough I'd say, the lions' paws were almost as big as dinner plates and they looked ready to do anything for a chunk of meat. At one point, chicken carcasses were sent out through larger tubes down the sides of the truck tail. The lions grabbed these and bit through flesh, cartilage and bone as if it were a big piece of crunchy butter.
Sam fought back bitter tears at seeing his brothers experiencing the lions up close, so I calmed his feelings by dragging him down to see the giraffes be fed about 5 minutes walk away.
The giraffes strode over to the feeding platform, swaying about gracefully if a little impatiently. Soon enough Sam and I were armed with leafy branches and standing at the high platform to meet the lovely giraffes. Sam jumped away in alarm as the giraffes tugged at his branches, scared of these long necked giants with huge wistful brown eyes. I fell in love once or twice and was so excited that this absolutely made my day.
The wildlife park was so quiet and serene. We could easily feel we were in an african savannah gazing at the white rhinos and the waterbucks. The animals all appeared very relaxed in their homelike enclosures. We watched a keeper feed the cheetahs, one lying on her lap like a baby. She said she'd raised them from cubs for the last 3 years and felt she could discuss baby issues along with mothers of human babies .. the little cheetahs had tummy and teething issues and all the usual sorts of things us moms find ourselves fretting over. You could see that they cheetahs felt she was their family, though she said they soon may not as hormones take over.
As we saw a keeper driving up to the giraffe house, we followed him over and were invited in to their barn to see them having their proper lunch. This time, we weren't on a viewing platform and just standing on the same level ground as the giraffes. I felt tiny. There was only the most minimal couple of cables streched across the room to separate the giraffes from us. At one point, the male giraffe leaned his head down to sniff my hair and I couldn't believe how I jumped, silly girl!
This was a wonderful last day in New Zealand. The wildlife park was the perfect closing activity. And Justin returning to us with passports freshly stamped with Thai visas was the icing on the cake!
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