New Zealand, Day 6 (Aug. 7), Christchurch

I think most long vacations have a point when things fall apart, for us last night and today were those days...

It started yesterday with Treg really not feeling well, more bad news about the cost of a new camera lens, followed by the mouse poop house, which led to the unexpected cost of the hotel in Christchurch and Maunia had an issue come up, which led to a total meltdown on her part...sigh...

Treg and I got up (I say got up, not like we were really sleeping... there had been much coughing and restlesness going on for many days and I was in the same bed...so ya) fairly early and decided he needed to head to a doctor...Christchurch was becoming a very expensive city for us :-(  So we spent a couple of hours in the doctor's office and pharmacy for meds to treat Treg's respiratory infection, the girls stayed back at the hotel and enjoyed some much craved for sleeping in. 

We did some research and tracked down a camera shop that had a used lens at a somewhat affordable price YAY!!  (did I mention Christchurch was an EXPENSIVE city for us) Yes, I did get a new auto focus lens...I was a happy girl. 

Unfortunately, Treg discovered there a serious lack of good medicine in NZ.  Unlike here, where you have a zillion options, there is like 1 option there...and it's not a very good one, so he was just resigned to being miserable until the antibiotics did their job.

We abandoned hope of doing much sightseeing in Christchurch.  Late afternoon we decided to go the the Antarctic Center.  Overall I have to say we thought this one was a waste of money.  It was expensive for what it was.  It had a couple of fun things though. 

There was an arctic storm room which drops the temperature and blows gale force winds as if you were in an arctic storm...brrrrr!

The other cool thing was the Hagglund ride.  It's this awesome machine that they use to get around in Antarctica.  This thing can go through deep water, up very steep inclines, go sideways along hill sides, and cross over ditches....it was an awesome machine!!  They also informed us that there are 3 months when you cannot get into or out of Antarctica...you better hope you don't come down with anything life threatening or you're just out of luck!

We also saw blue penguins which are supposed to be all over the place in the wild in NZ but we never saw them anywhere except in captivity in the Arctic center.

Having fun on the ice slide...fun...but a little cold on the fanny

Standing on melted polar ice from both poles

The signs in New Zealand cracked us up.

A rainbow lorakeet

After the Antarctic center we headed to downtown Christchurch.  It was craaaaazzzzzyyyy.  It was game day for the All Blacks v. Australia in rugby....a HUGE deal!!  Rallies all over the place and every store had a banner or balloon display or window display rooting on the All Blacks!  The funniest one was a show going on in the town square.  It was these Chinese guys chanting for the All Blacks with their thick Chinese accents while waving huge flags...it was quite amusing.

Maunia was so glad she found a flappy hat :-) (and she was verrrry happy she had it to keep her ears warm during the game)



The Chinese performers

Sierra in a lovely Kiwi bird hat

Huge chess set on the town square

We bundled up and headed to the game.  Our tickets specifically said "no camera or recording equipment at this venue"  so we didn't take any... LIARS!!  You could totally have cameras and camcorders...I was so ticked.  We have no pictures of this incredible experience.  Seeing everyone dressed in their black was so cool and the haka was AWESOME!!!!  We had changed our original dates for travel in NZ specifically so we could see the All Blacks game...it's something Treg has always wanted to do. We had bought tickets in the "take a kid to footy day" section :-) We were probably 13 rows off the field with an awesome view and since it was more of a family friendly section so we were spared much of the drunken partying.

 Here is a video of the haka, it's almost better than the game.  I love how the white boys try to look even tougher than the big Samoans haha.



Sierra was cracking me up.  She had heard that if you yelled "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" that Australians would yell back "oy, oy, oy".  So all night she had this running debate.  "Should I yell it mom?  I don't see many Aussies around" (true, we were definitely surrounded by Kiwis NOT Aussies). "I don't want to tick anyone off".  I didn't realize anyone else was listening until the lady in front of us finally turned around and said "just yell it sweetie, someone will yell back,  heck I'll yell back for you", which embarassed Sierra so she really wasn't going to yell it now!  On the way out of the stadium (the All Blacks won by the way...of course) she was still lamenting that she had not been able to yell it when these...ummm, slightly tipsy guys behind us said "what does she want us to yell?  Aussie, Aussie, Aussie?"  I said "no she wants you to yell the other part"  so I said "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" and they yelled "OY, OY, OY"  mission accomplished haha.

It turned out to be an awesome day in the end.  Fun game and Maunia found a "flappy" hat (which she looks adorable in), and it can only go up from here!