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Sweet, Sweet Alcohol and Some Not So Sweet...
Christchurch, 18th November 2001.
After a long nights sleep in we woke up fairly casually, not the
best way to acclimatise to a new time zone, but we were really
tired, ok?!. I was the first to wake and tried to get up very
quietly, which unfortunately, due to my elephant like finesse, was
still very loud, so everyone else soon got up. Due to our late
wakening, we missed the free breakfast (why don't they serve
breakfast at 11:30am? That's just silly!!)
 We took a stroll down a main street to have a look at the nearby
craft fair. It was very colourful with a huge variety of nick
knacks, bits & bobs and food. After partaking in a few of the free
samples, the staple diet of the backpacker, we were forced to buy a
full meal due to still being hungry. We found a fantastic little
cafe near the craft fair that made some amazing sandwiches and one
of the best fry ups ever. We watched some student guys perform an
entertaining street show. They were really good, and the audience
got got really into it, probably a little too much...one silly lady
in the audience kept interfering with their performance. The show
involved setting one of the performers alight, which was completely
safe seeing as they'd performed it dozens of times. But the lady
kept getting in the way and not letting the other guy light him!
Eventually they got rid of her and finished their show.
Now fully fuelled we continued our exploration of the town. As we
all wanted to see different things, we each went our separate ways,
agreeing to meet later. (This, incidentally, is the key to
travelling with a group of people and not wanting to kill each
other. Time apart is essential). I had a good stroll through
Christchurch. I already knew how English it was, and the walk
reinforced this idea. I decided to take in a bit of local culture,
so I checked out the local museum. It was quite good (especially as
it was free!). The
Maori carvings, weapons, boats & masks were
particularly interesting. The New Zealanders are very proud of their
Maori heritage and this can be clearly seen by the amount of museums
and dedications made to them. (There are still sore points about the
treatment of the Maoris in the past, but that's getting a bit heavy
for my journal...) There was a alos a little display on Antarctic
Expeditions (most of them fly out from New Zealand because it's the
closest inhabited country). After reading about them, it filled me
with a desire to visit both poles. Might take a bit of planning &
training first though. Maybe for my next gap year?
 I also noticed a sign for a
Rutherford exhibit (In a nutshell,
Ernest Rutherford was a top Kiwi Scientist who, among other things,
did loads of work or radioactivity and made the major step of
discovering protons. He's a national hero and appears on the back of
the NZ$100 note) Being a bit of a science guy, I had a quick peek,
but it was a pretty poor display. Oh well.
Nat decided to head our to a big Antarctic Museum, just out of town.
She hoped to find out more about her Great Uncle, Captain Oates (he
was on Scott's famous 2nd Antarctic Expedition). Although it was
pretty good, she didn't find much out about him.
We all met back up in the evening and decided that our next major
requirement to was to get our FIRST gap year drink. We couldn't
drink in the US because we were under 21, so we had to play some
catch up here! As it was a Sunday evening, everywhere was pretty
dead, but we eventually decided on a quite busy bar with a huge
number of pool tables. We had a look through what beers they had,
the main two of interest were the infamous Stella Artois and a local
brew. We decided to have a few pints of each. The Stella was as
refreshing as always, but the local beer reflected its dirt cheap
price. It tasted like dirty shandy. Yuck!
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To know the road ahead, ask those coming back
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