Day 7 - Christchurch and Akaroa

International Parkrun - Tick.  Yep - that's right - Steve and I did the Christchurch Parkrun in Hagley Park this morning. 

We also happened to walk in and back so clocked up a neat 10,000 steps by 9am.  BTW - we're keeping an eye on daily steps and have been over 10,000 every day so far.  Right now I'm on 18,730 and the day's not over.

After Parkrun we took a trip south to Akaroa via Lyttleton.  First stop - markets!  Didn't know they were on but decided to have a squiz - and for a tiny market it packed a punch!

Check the focus on the pup at the doggy treat stand!

Lyttleton was one of the first landing places by Capt. Cook on Endeavour in 1776, became a port in 1849 and is now a major trading site for timber, petrol and lpg.

And then it was off to Akaroa

Just 75 kilometres from the city of Christchurch, Akaroa is a historic French and British settlement nestled in the heart of an ancient volcano.  It was an overcast day so the normally turquoise water was more of a muted grey, but it was still lovely and the fish and chips were damn fine!

Daniel wanted a picture of the puppy!

And then after a bit of a rest we had a lovely dinner with family friends - Maxine and Chris, followed by a game of Five Crowns - Emily smashed it and of course thinks it's an excellent game.  I didn't play - instead had a huge catch up with Maxine and Chris' daughter Sarah who lives in Paris.  

Five Crowns

Thanks Maxine and Chris - it was great seeing you!

Day 6 - Christchurch

It was a morning of sleepy heads and admin - me awake early but plugging away at yesterday's blog post, kids punching out zzzzz's until 10:00am, all of us getting our washing done.  Steve was the most active and nicked across the road to a park area to practice throwing his new frisbee.

We're in an Airbnb - extremely spacious with a luxurious king-sized bed, gorgeous stained glass, excellent floorboards in the bathroom, a dome shower that contains the steam and a cute pup who looks like Alf. 

At the nice early time of 11:00am we headed into town - about a 5 minute walk.  Em and I checked out the Quake Centre and the boys watched a funny clown show - part of a month long busker festival on here at the moment.  The Quake Centre was good - obviously a different experience to a clown show - and included footage and info about the quake, but it was the personal stories that really highlighted the devastation and chaos of 22 Feb 2011.   Christchurch still bears the scars with a mix of disused buildings, gaping holes, new builds and ongoing restorations. 

It was a quick visit to town, because we'd booked ourselves in for just a touch more excitement at the Adrenaline Forest. Historically I would have said I was scared of heights, but after yesterday's efforts Hallelujah - I'm cured!  We spent 3 hours at this place, starting with a brief on how to harness and clip in and out, followed by a quick zip line practice then off we went.  

Started with a tiddler - a mere 2 to 3 metres off the ground then straight to level 4 and onto the real deal - levels 5, 5b and 6 - a whopping 25m up with zip lines zigging this way and that.  

Can't believe chickeny pants me did it!  I'd be interested how you go from being scared of heights to scrambling around the top of 25m tall trees.  My theory - start small, don't look down and focus and I mean really FOCUS on clipping in and out.  

I had one blooper - sat down in my harness on the the zipline WITHOUT putting the pulley on first - outcome - stationery dangling.  Did it right in front of the instructor too and it took a ridiculous amount of energy trying to get back on the platform.  How embarrassment! 😐

I de-harnessed about 30 mins before everyone else to take photos, hence no piccies of me 😡.  But - on the plus side the last one Steve and the kids did was a challenge doozy and they were knackered.  At least I ended on a metaphorical high 😁 instead of going for too long, getting weak and crotchety and basically ending on a literal low 😡.

And boy oh boy were we all ready for dinner.  Steve chose a winner of a place - super upmarket food court kind of joint - in an area that looked like it was going to be a busker-less version of Mitchell (and I may have said words to this effect) but it turned out to be a hidden gem...See....

Where we had the best pizza Jem has ever had!

After dinner we wandered into town and found this Japanese busker...

And Riverside Markets

Long day, totally knackered, early-ish to bed to dream about more zip lining 😁 

Day 5 - Franz Josef to Christchurch

 Long drive day = (whiney) comments (mainly from just one child (DP)) about... 

1. not stopping 
2. back seat comfort, or lack thereof
3. hunger

Responses

1. shoosh there little man - sometimes life is about the journey, not the destination
2. it's hilarious - I'm the smallest person in the car and I get the biggest, most comfortable seat ALL THE TIME
3. and your last Combantrin was when?

Anyway - off to an ouchy start...

Followed by an almost immediate breach of point 1...

And then tension for DP - was it ok to break point 1 to fix point 3?  No answer - too busy eating not one but two pies.

Fuelled up it was time to cruise from the West to East coast via Arthur's pass, that included crossing this...

and scenery like this

And then EXCITEMENT plus!! 

Time for the cave stream - a pretty innocuous name for an adrenaline laden 1 hour adventure extraordinaire that involved an exhilarating 594m slip trip fest through an underground cave stream in the PITCH BLACK.

There are many brochures and websites that tell you exactly how to prepare for the cave stream walk that we read after we'd been 😆.  Hence the difference in preparation between the group on the left and Danny P on the right - and this was just the start of amateur hour.

Mistake Number 1 - rocking up to cave entrance without torch.  Rectification - 30 minute walk from cave entrance to car and back again with small torch.  

Mistake Number 2 - not checking torch batteries.  No rectification. 

Mistake 3 - forging into cave anyway. Rectification - sneakily waiting for 2 groups of non-amateurs with large working headlamps and carefully placing Price party in between them.

And so began an adventure - some (JP) may have called it an ordeal.  Onwards and upwards through a skinny splashy rocky chilly squishy dark crack in the ground!!  And oh goody - there were eels!

Amateurs ready for anything!

What it looks like inside the cave stream

Map of the route, wiggle baby eels and the tricky exit from the cave

Whoo hoooo. That was one of the coolest things ever! 

And then off we popped to the next attraction a mere 2kms away...Castle Rocks.  Also cool, but not in an adrenaline-laden, eely kind of way.

Very pretty flowers everywhere and the weather was perfect..

Then on to Christchurch and out to dinner....

Very nice Mexican but teensy weensy serves

And afterwards a stroll to get Gelato where we stumbled across a bunch of buskers belting out a bunch of Split Enz covers and yep he was singing I See Red!! 

And if that wasn't enough for one day the boys went indoor bouldering while we checked out a cost-co sized supermarket called Pak 'n Save.

Truly knackered after all that and am still in bed now at 10am the next morning.  Been awake though and spending waaay too long doing this blog post!

Day 4 - Franz Josef Glacier

 Franz Josef is a nice little place - much smaller and quieter than Queenstown, with a main street with the Southern Alps in the background that looks just like this...

First up this morning was a bunch of small walks to check out the glacier.  We're determined to do a minimum of 10,000 steps a day and these knocked off a solid 9,000.

Here's some of the sights....

Road to the start of a series of short walks, including one to view the glacier terminal face, one to the Peter's Pool for a cool reflection of the glacier terminal face and one to another excellent suspension bridge (a personal favourite 😄) that had nothing to do with the glacier terminal face!

First walk to view the glacier TF...

Penny Price visits Peter's Pool to see the reflection of the glacier TF

and a suspension bridge minus kiddies, they went a different way that they thought was shorter and they were right, but we got to muck around on the bridge - win win.

After our walks the boys had a round of frisbee golf and M and I nipped over to Okarito on the coast, where we saw this....

and this...

all in all frisbee golf was probably the better choice 😖

And after all the walking, plus the excitement of Queenstown over the last couple of days were were all a bit knackered and crashed BUT like troopers we rallied in the afternoon for a spot of made up games catching bottle tops (as you do!).  Interesting to see the different demeanours mid-game.  Jeremy cool.  Emily calm.  Daniel a stress head from stress head's ville.  Not sure if you can tell this from the photos below...

And then there was this... no words....

And finally we got a sneaky visit from some NZ wildlife....

Right now Steve is attempting to teach the kids Euchre.  It's not going well.  Also makes me realise our family contains only Chiefs, not an Indian in sight.  Makes for some very robust conversation 😄

We are vaguely contemplating searching for glow worms later on but it doesn't get dark here until about 9:30pm so it would be waaaaay past my bedtime. Jury is still out on this one....

Day 3 - Queenstown to Franz Joseph Glacier

OMG - in shock.  Somebody who's name starts with J got out of bed when asked and was not, I repeat NOT the last one ready.  That honour may just have gone to somebody who's name starts with P.  Yep - a pattern here and yes I've been having multiple shockers 😒 ('unamused' emoji) 😎 (smiling face with sunglasses emoji)

So - off we popped at a respectable 8:30am heading north to Franz Joseph via some very windy roads and spectacular scenery...

Until we got to the super cool Blue Pools, with this view from the car park.

It was a 20 minute walk through open fields and mossy forrest and over a wibbly wobbly suspension bridge

to get to here - the beautiful Blue Pools!!

Where Daniel, still feisty from his bungy, jumped up and over not only the railing but also the wire suspensiony part of the bridge - hence the superior height and projection.  

Steve feigned disinterest for all of a minute then he had to up the ante with an (over rotated) backward flip.  

BUT the heroine of the day was Miss M.  She ummed and ahhhed for a while, claimed she couldn't jump because the sun had gone behind a cloud - but then it popped back out and there went her excuse.  So, over she went, probably more worried about a wardrobe malfunction with the minuscule bikini than the height.    

To say the water was fresh may be an understatement.  Poor little poppet did some serious hyperventilating before a quick re-arrangement of small bikini scraps and a swift exit.   

The Blue Pools were the highlight of the day 

And tuckered this little fella out...

🤣😂🤣😂