Road Trip Time!

Alright, so we began our journey in the South Island! We left on Saturday morning to head to the airport in Auckland to take us to Christchurch down south. 

We got there about an hour and a half early, got something to eat quick, and then headed to our Jetstar plane. 

Not once did we ever have to show any sort of ID, and we just breezed through security (didn’t have to take off our shoes or coats or anything). Once we got to our gate, we only had about twenty minutes until we had to board our plane. It was one of the smallest planes I have ever been on besides the one when I went skydiving and it was also one of the shortest. After take off I feel like we were only in the air for like half hour before they were talking about our decent. It was about an hour total for the whole flight which was pretty nice. 

Once we got to the airport, we called our rental car service to come pick us up. We started packing our things into the Ace Car shuttle before realizing we had rented an Amex car. We figured it out in the end and got our car! It’s a white Nissan who we named Fran (with a license plate FRN…).

Once we left the airport, we made our way to our hostile called Around the World Backpackers. It was a cool little hostile that was pretty close to the city center. Our room had two sets of bunk beds so we were in a room with just one other person from Belgium. We decided to do some exploring of the town, so we followed our map to the town center and just walked around. Christchurch was really pretty since the leaves were changing and everything was so green or colorful. We came across this old-fashioned street with a bunch of cute little shops. 

We did go to a little coffee shop where I had the best Chai Latte I’ve ever had in my life! Shaina got iced coffee which wound up being a coffee float essentially (coffee served with ice cream…who knew). 

We kept walking around and did a little bit of shopping in town. A lot of the shops were empty or closed. There was a huge earthquake that hit Christchurch in 2011, so the city is still recovering and under a lot of construction. Our hostile had a free BBQ that night, so we definitely jumped on the opportunity for free food! We ended up meeting some girls staying at our hostile who were all student teaching in Auckland! We ended up being on the same flight too that day and didn’t even realize it. Most of them were going to school in Indiana, and they were all teaching different subjects throughout schools in Auckland and staying with host families. It was so crazy to run into people doing the same thing we were doing. They were doing the Kiwi Experience bus tour, so they were taking a bus all over the south on their break rather than driving a car like us. I’m glad we took the car though because they had to wake up super early to catch their bus to the next location.

That night, we had tickets to a late night Improv Comedy Show at the Court Theater. We picked up our tickets a couple hours early and then went to a place called Dux Live for some live music. We went back to the theater and got really good seats!

 Then the cast came on and they explained how the show worked. Basically we were in an act with a crew like Star Trek in space and the audience provided input throughout for things they should do. There were four men and one woman in the act. 

There had been people from the crowd making spaceships, and then we got to vote on our favorite, so we were on the Spaceship Playschool since it looked like a little school. The woman was the captain of the ship, there was an engineer, a doctor, a man who played a bunch of different parts (not a crew member) and the guy who talked to us (who also played “the computer”). We had decided as an audience that the issue to be acted out on the ship was dirty dishes not being cleaned, and then overall a major issue we decided to use was the oppression of classes in our society (higher vs. lower class differences). They started off with their improv discussing the issue of dirty dishes. It’s pretty funny because they would just laugh at themselves for what they said. I watch Who’s Line is it Anyways a lot, so it was cool seeing it done live. Then we got a stress call from another alien species (we decided on a descendant of the lemur species, so this is where one of the crew members dressed up and talked in a really high pitched voice. The captain and doctor got apparated to their planet. This is where the issue of social class came into play because there was major class oppression on this planet. There was this Gorlac thing that didn’t say anything but just stood there and the female actor could not remember what it was called so she kept mispronouncing it the whole time. It was funny. The stress call was made because apparently these lemur species couldn’t bend their knees and had dropped their keys and couldn’t pick them up. It doesn’t make sense, but it was just funny watching them make stuff up on the spot. Then there were issues with a lemur trying to gain all the power from the higher class, etc. etc. and it just carried on from there. In the end, a lower class lemur tried taking over, then he came aboard our ship where he dueled the captain. She fought him and eventually defeated him and then she had to defeat the Gorlac. It was really funny, and I would definitely do another show like it! The cast did a great job just going with whatever was happening, and you can tell they really like what they do. Some of the things they came up with were extremely clever which is why I’m sure they got hired for the job! Maybe there will be another show going on the next time we are in Christchurch to go to!

The next morning we checkout out of our hostile and went to go find some Easter festival on the beach. We wound up at a pier that we walked out on. 

The waves were pretty big, and it was really relaxing just walking down it and listening to the waves. There was a guy surfing, but he didn’t do much. Mostly he just floated over the waves rather than actually try to catch them. 

When we walked back, the festival we had seen online basically just consisted of a ferris wheel, a couple other rides, and some overly priced games, so we headed back to town. We went to the Botanical Gardens in Christchurch which was a huge area with a bunch of trees, plants, flowers, and a river that ran through it. It was a really pretty place, and I would have loved to just go and sit there and read a book. We saw some HUGE trees that I can only imagine are hundreds of years old.

It was a beautiful day out, so it was the perfect activity to do before heading to the next destination.

Although our stay in Christchurch (the second largest city in NZ) was short, we’ll be heading back there in about a week!