Kiwis in Kiwiland

It took 25 hours from the time we left our house until we arrived at our hotel in Christchurch.  Fortunately there were no mishaps, though we did have to have our boots inspected by New Zealand immigration and had to declare all of our food....both of which are standard protocol for this island nation to make sure travelers aren't inadvertently bringing in something that will cause problems..  We did have 2 "athletic encounters"....first the Timbers (Portland's pro soccer team) were at PDX the same time we were and second the All-Blacks' plane (New Zealand's national rugby team) was at the Auckland airport. 

Today (Monday, October 22) is Labour Day in New Zealand.  That meant that the streets were pretty deserted when we took our first walk. There are lots of traffic cones, fences, empty lots, buildings in various stages of demolition / rebuilding.....but Christchurch is indeed open for business.  In fact, one of the places we were encouraged to visit is the new "container mall."  The what, you ask.  It's an open-air mall where all of the "buildings" are made from one or more ship containers.  Plenty of variety from coffee places, pizza, sausages, to New Zealand souvenirs, an upscale "grocery" store that looked more like a place to buy food gifts than food for home consumption, to clothing stores and even a lingerie store.....and somehow we managed to resist entering that one. And yes, we found the nearby cache.

We feel right at home with the weather...it rains for a few minutes, stops, rains again, maybe the sun peaks through for a bit, more rain, etc.  It's amusing how many locals have apologized to us about the weather -- not that they could change it -- though we keep reassuring them that we're Oregonians and used to rain.  That said, it's a bit cooler than home....with wind chill it was about 2 degrees (yes, that's 2 degrees C, or about 36 degrees F) this morning, and the high for the day was projected to be 10 degrees C.  The Internet weather report that our hotel showed us suggested  "3 to 4 layers of clothing" which turned out to be about right (shirt, jacket liner, jacket).  No, we did not take the hotel up on their offered umbrellas.

Our second walk was with the plan to take a tour of the botanical gardens but they were cancelled due to rain.  So we wandered the gardens a bit, couldn't find another cache, explored the "Canterbury Museum", and eventually headed to a restaurant and had to kill an hour before the dinner menu was available. 

We've noticed a few words or phrases that just aren't used at home: rubbish (trash), way out (exit, though the latter is also used), baggage reclaim (makes more sense since you're reclaiming your items, not claiming them for the first time), car clamped (when one has parked illegally and the authorities don't want the owner to be able to move the car).  We also confirmed that Kiwis who visit North America or continental Europe have the same issue with cars that we do....they go to turn on the turn signal and end up activating the windshield wiper. And we learned that in NZ it's impossible to purchase unlimited internet, it's all pay by the byte, and we've been warned that hotels with good internet will charge, and free internet probably isn't worth much.

It looks like we should be able to stay awake for another hour to meet our goal of staying up til 8pm after international travel.  Considering that neither of us got more than 2 hours of airline sleep last night that's a non-trivial goal, though one that it looks like we will meet.  It's a 20-hour time difference, but of course to our bodies that means it's only a 4-hour difference with NZ being 4 hours behind but the next day (ie, when it's 11pm Sunday night at home it's 7pm Monday night in NZ). 

And with that, I'll say good night!