Two Days in Christchurch

Finally catching up with relatives

Yesterday Bill and Brenda (my cousins) came round to take us out for the day. First off they took us through Christchurch city centre and then we headed for Akaroa (a small town about an hours drive south). We drove over the Cashmere/Port Hills and saw some amazing views, the countryside is beautiful there. It was a pretty windy, steep and long drive, eventually we got to the viewpoint for the best view of Akaroa and got out and took some pics, the sea looked beautiful. Then we headed down towards the town. It was a lovely little town, it was actually settled by the French…all the streets have French names, it really was lovely. We had some lunch there and a little walk, then we headed back up the hills and towards Lyttelton (which used to be bigger than Christchurch…a long time ago).

We saw some amazing views of the Canterbury Plains. On one part of the hill we stopped the car and Mum, Bill and I walked down the bridal path to the bottom to meet Brenda who’d driven on in the car. It was a really steep walk down, but I’m glad I did it, better than walking up it anyhow!! At the bottom we had some Rocky road cake (which I think we’d deserved) then we set off again.

Next stop was Scarborough beach, which was quite small and a bit muddy (and it was getting cold) so we didn’t stay there long. I wanted to get to a chemist as by now my arm (from my injuries on NYE) was really inflamed around the burns, it’d been painful for the past couple of days so I thought I’d better get it looked at. We found a chemist, the pharmacist took a look at it and said I should go to the doctors, as it looked really infected and I could even get blood poisoning from it….nightmare!! So we went over the way to the doctors to get it seen to. Finally we got in and he gave me some antibiotics and they put a dressing on them and I was told just to keep an eye on it in case the inflammation spreads. Anyway, after the doctors, we all went back to Aunty Betty’s to pick her and Uncle Derek up and then they took us out for dinner, it was an all you can eat carvery with all the different foods you could imagine…lovely!!

Today Aunty Betty took us to Christchurch to have a quick look around…it was very, very cold and windy though, and it started to rain, so we didn’t have much of a look around, we ended up just going to a shopping mall!!

I really like what I’ve seen so far of Christchurch, it is very similar to England. It’s actually a refreshing change to come here after Australia, the climate is so different, I’ve even got a duvet at night so it’s nice and snuggly!! We now have to prepare for our trip around the South Island, we leave tomorrow on the Transalpine Express to Greymouth…I’m really looking forward to that.