Where is Darran?

Today started out with Vincent, Danny, and I scouting out some food. We ended up settling on Subway for breakfast. After that we split up and I ended up  taking a stroll around Christchurch. During the journey, I visited the Christchurch Botanical Gardens. The gardens are very pleasant and have a good variety of plants to check out and are a good place to do people watching. Christchurch has a main square called Cathedral Square in the center of the city. This is a great place to chill and on the weekends street performers and food vendors can be found in the square. The most identifying feature of the square is the cathedral that sits in the corner of it.

After visiting the gardens and walking around other parts of Christchurch, I visited a few bike shops, a computer store to buy CD’s to back up pictures, and a Pak’n Save to pick up some fruit, juice, and other items. I think I then grabbed some more food and visited an internet cafe to upload some pictures to Facebook. Eventually, we all ended up back at the hostel. I think we started out at the hostel bar playing some Uno and chatting before then going out to a bar called Shooters. The place started off dead, but was quickly filled with college kids. At Shooters the drinks are expensive, the music is decent, and the crowd is sort of rowdy, but in general this place is just whacky. The bouncers are retarded and eventually half our party got kicked out. Lucy got kicked out for falling asleep on the bar, Vincent got kicked out for supposedly dancing with a prostitute, and I got kicked out for looking too tired. I think we got bounced because we were backpackers and they didn’t want to have anything to do with us. Three out of our party of six got kicked out and soon the rest of our group would follow. We then ended up in an Irish pub with some live music which promptly shut down.

After making a disjointed journey through town we ended up McDonald’s. Here we proceeded to have a late night feed. At that time McDonald’s was running a combo called the Mac Attack. This bad boy is 2 Big Mac’s, fries, and a drink for around 10 NZD. It was exactly what I needed and I promptly destroyed it before we ended up heading back to the hostel and crashing.

Lucy enjoying a drink while a Mac Attack waits to be destroyed

Plerts is a nifty new service developed and brought to the life by a local entrepreneur, Colin Anawaty. It provides a personal alert system that notifies a defined safety net or emergency services in the case of medical or safety emergency. If interested, check out this nice demo of Plerts on YouTube.

Even though we took it relatively easy the last night in Queenstown, the morning after still felt like we had a big night. Maybe it was because we had a big night, maybe it was because three weeks on the road was really starting to take its toll. The bus out of Queenstown had about 15 people on it. By the level of activity on the bus you would think no one was on it. Most everyone ends up destroyed mentally, physically, and financially after their adventures in that blessed place. The good news was that not long into our journey we stopped in a junction town called Cromwell. If you end up here make sure to check out the bakery. They make mean meat pies and sandwiches.

It was a long day on the bus and eventually we stopped at Lake Tekapo to eat lunch. Vincent and I spent the stop throwing the rugby ball around and enjoying the weather and the scenery. We also visited The Church of the Good Shepherd. This would be a magnificent place for an intimate wedding.

Finally, we got in to Christchurch, checked in, took a shower, and met up with our new roommates. We also caught up with Mark who had left Queenstown the day before and had already made some friends. Around dinner time Vincent and I went out exploring and settled for a mall food court. Then we headed back to the hostel bar, Saints and Sinners, and ended up having a mad session of UNO. The trip seemed to be morphing from intense madness to a more mellow vibe.

Lake Tekapo

Church of the Good Shepherd

Tour progress so far:

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