New Zealand Discoverer

Day Eleven – 6 March 2012 – Day of the hundred dollar shirt.

Weather: Cloud, some sun, 19

I think I’m coming down with the bus cold, but I know it’s my allergies. My eyes itching and I have that itch in the back of my throat. I took a decongestant last night and am loading up my day bag with cough drops, decongestant, Advil, throat spray, cortisone nasal spray and anti-histamine. I’ve doubled my dose of anti-histamine.

Think I’m flying higher than nip-saturated cats.

I went down for breakfast and found all the chairs taken by the other Trafalgar tour, but being the lone solo now, I found a lone chair at a small table. This morning breakfast was creamy eggs and vienna style sausages.

We left at 8 for the one and a half hour drive to Christchurch where Nellie wants us to see the state of the place and explain why we had to source accommodation so far out of town. (Not that anyone was complaining about our villas…I mean condos…at a golf resort). En route, we passed through Darfield which was the site of the first quake in Sept 2010 and was a 7.1. There isn’t much damage apparent. It doesn’t sit on the same type of land that Christchurch does.

Nellie tells us that Christchurch was settled by the French (in a community near the Littleton harbour) and by the English. In fact, it was once known as the most English city outside of England. The New Zealand Company worked to bring settlers here in the mid-1800s and sold land to them for 3 Pounds an acre…land they bought from the local tribe for 1 Shilling an acre.

Overhead. It’ll get you every time.

The Company wanted settlers of good character and required a note from their priest before they would be allowed to go. They wanted the city to have lots of churches, not lots of pubs.

The settlers also had to be under 40. Seven hundred or so settled the area in 1850. The founding father of the city is Robert Godley who named the town for the college his attended at Oxford. They moved in, drained the wetlands and built a city without any way of knowing they were building on soft ground over fault lines.

Probably why the local tribe sold the land so cheap.

Before the quake, it was a city of about 365,000 (the second largest in NZ) but a lot have moved to Timaru, Wellington and Auckland. Some have even taken off to Australia. The quake’s damage was primarily in the eastern suburbs and the city has been divided into zones related to the damage. The red zone is the worst. It’s the no-go zone and the government is going to buy out the homes based on 2006 valuations.

The orange zone is a zone in limbo. It’s not badly damaged enough to warrant a buyout but the homes need major repairs.

The white zone is on the wetlands.

The green zone is further divided into three zones – T1, T2 and T3.

Nellie’s house is in T3 and she describes it as being somewhat like the orange zone where they’re kinda in limbo. This zone has land that needs to be stabilized. In Nellie’s case, the insurance company said the house is over the cap of 100,000 dollars in repairs and so it needs to be demolished but the engineer from the government said it could be repaired for 70,000 dollars. They requested a second assessment and haven’t heard but her husband got a peek at the results which put it over the 100,000 dollar cap. Now they’re just waiting for the paperwork to go through. She honestly doesn’t know what she’ll do when they get it settled – whether they’ll rebuild on site or move elsewhere. It all depends on how much help they can get and what the government says they can do. She said they got a great deal of help from the Red Cross with supplies and with keeping up with mortgage payments for those that lost their jobs. Nellie’s husband lost his job and now works tearing down chimneys.

As we enter the city and go by the airport, she tells us the city gets 648 mm of rain a year and has 740 parks with the average temperature around 11 in the winter and 22 in the summer. As we go down a main street, all the hotels and motels have No Vacancy signs lit up. Apparently, every room in the city is being given to construction workers and the tourists have to go outside of the city.

The first sign of damage is a church that is missing its interior and sections of it’s exterior so that you can see right through it. Nellie said it’s the “holiest” church in the city.

I know. Groan.

There is a lot of construction going on. Some is scaffolding as buildings are repaired. Other areas are being cleaned up and/or flattened.

Then we drive along Hagley Park which looks a lot like Hyde Park and Nellie said it was planted to remind the settlers of home. Not far away we pull up to the Remembrance Bridge which is closed off and Nellie gives us 40 minutes to visit the section of the city centre that has been sealed off, but the shops that have been condemned have re-opened in sea containers. It’s so nicely done, I could see them keeping that section. The sea containers have the sides cut out and replaced with glass and doors and walking along them is like walking down an open mall. I half expected some thing with jagged edges with wooden doors and dark stores but they are beautifully done.

I found a souvenir shop and picked up a Christchurch t-shirt and a fridge magnet to infuse $30 into the local economy. I came across a grocery shop that was like the old time shops with all the groceries on the wall behind the counter and the rest of the walls full of chocolate and candy.

At the end of the street, someone told us we could see part of the Cathedral at the end of the blocked off street. The barriers had plastic viewing ports so that we could get a pic of the front door of the Cathedral. The rest is hidden behind trees.

On my way back, I got a pic of the Remembrance Bridge listing all the major battles New Zealanders have taken part in. The bridge is closed off to foot and vehicle traffic.

As we leave Christchurch we can see examples of reconstruction and buildings being torn down. Some 700 remain to be taken down, so there’s no shortage of construction work in Christchurch for the foreseeable future. They have six malls. One remained open after the quake and another reopened before Christmas only to be closed again by the 3 heavy Christmas Eve tremors.

We left Christchurch by 11 am and start driving through wine country. Apparently, tonight’s dinner is at a winery.

Wonder if I should take up drinking to help with the allergies.

We make a quick bathroom stop at Cheviot and Nellie offered her “lollie service” when we got aboard (where we get a candy). We continue onto our lunch stop which is the town of Kaikoura. En route, Nellie put on a short video that was a profile piece of a cray fisherman who lives there. Apparently, he’s her husbands best mate.

I would have thought Nellie was….oh wait.

Interesting video. Learned about how he has his own quota and can deliver anytime so he fishes in the winter when the supply to China is lower and he gets better prices (we saw crayfish on the menu at one of the shops and they were asking over $100). In summer, he farms and drives an Everglades type air boat on a local river for tourists in.

Besides the crayfish, Kaikoura is the place for whale, dolphin and seal watching. Nellie offered us a flight but there were no takers as you would have had to skip lunch to get it. And most of us can see whales at home. I imagine if they were staying in Christchurch instead of Terrance Downs, they’d have the time for this optional. I can’t see whale watching by plane. Rather do that by boat.

Rather be in the water with the dolphins.

We travel along the shoreline where it’s easy to spot seals on the jagged rocks just below the highway along the shore.

I took some video of these cute guys too.

Kaikoura has snow covered peaks above it and the ocean in front of it. Nice spot. We pull into the town and do a short tour of the shops along the one street and John pulls into the parking lot at the end next to the public toilets (which I have to admit are so readily available in every town we’ve visited and they are fairly clean and well stocked.)

I run up to the beach for a quick pic then go looking for the grocery store to pick up some shampoo. They even have my brand but not my “moisture” type for dry hair. No problem. I’ll switch between the two for the remainder of the tour. First time I’ve ever ran short of shampoo on tour.

A bunch of my tourmates visit the pharmacy looking for cold and cough remedies. I’m well stocked and what I took this morning has nipped my slightly congested head in the bud. I have to say I’ve never heard so much coughing, sneezing and sniffling on a bus.

After a pharmacy look-see, I pick up a sandwich and a bottle of water for lunch. I found a unique sweatshirt with the outline of a kiwi on the front, a map of NZ on the hood and New Zealand on the bottom of the back. Really nice shirt. I thought it said $79 but she charged me $99. I might have read the wrong label, but the quality is pretty good, so why not?

Yup. My hundred dollar shirt.

$80 Canadian.

There, that’s better. Turns out the $79 was in Australian dollars and was in bigger lettering. On a New Zealand souvenir sweatshirt. Strange.

When we get back on the bus, Nellie tells us she has good news and bad news. We unanimously tell her we want the bad news first.

We won’t be taking the ferry to Wellington tomorrow morning.

Oh oh.

Nope. We’re taking it tomorrow afternoon.

The good news.

Yeah, you all know what that is.

We get to sleep in. Big time. LOL

All that matters is that you’re on the bus by 10:30 am. Fine by me.

Boy, I hope the internet is available in my room. I’d love the chance to get the rest of my photos downloaded and the videos.

It’s a bit more than an hour to Blenheim through rolling hay covered hills and vineyards. Blenheim is a fair sized city of 27,000 that was named for a battle won by the Duke of Marlborough. It’s only a half hour away from the ferry dock in Picton. (Every time she mentions that, I can’t help but think of the ferry stop in Pictou, Nova Scotia).

We pull into our hotel, the Chateau Marlborough. Nellie stands at the entrance as we pile in and just tells us our room number and then tells us that our keys are in the door. Interesting way of doing it. I check into the internet and find it’s 100mb free (which would satisfy most people) and 10 cents for every mb after that. I go into my room and start downloading my Mount Cook pics and easily hit the 100mb limit. I already owe them fifty cents. Best part is I get another 100 mb tomorrow so I can download today’s photos tomorrow while I lounge in bed till 10:30 am.

Ha!

This is a very nice hotel. The room has all the usual amenities that I’ve mentioned before plus a kitchenette. No safe.

I’m on the first floor in the first room. Hopefully the traffic won’t keep me up. Then again, a 4.3 earthquake didn’t wake me.

We get an hour to freshen up and board the bus for our drive to a local winery for dinner – The George Michael winery. One couple is not able to go because the wife is quite sick. Turns out she has a fever and chills so they’re gone to the hospital. I’m guessing she’ll at least spend the night just to get some fluids back into her. She’s been sick for days. I’m surprised they left it so long.

It’s only a 15 minute drive to a beautiful vineyard with grapes about half grown on the vine.

We are introduced to the owner’s daughter who makes the wine. She gives the wine drinkers a sample of four types of wine then gives us a quick tour of the vats and a still and lots of barrels. The most interesting thing I noticed were the whiskey rocks in the gift corner. They’re rocks you can put in the freezer then use them in your whiskey (or whatever you drink) and since they don’t melt, it doesn’t dilute the drink.

Then we notice the small print – Made in Vermount.

LOL

We’re herded into the dining room and munch on bread and what appears to be really fresh butter. The menu is set with a melon and slice of ham for an appetizer, a choice of Coq au Vin or Fruits de Mer for our main with excellent potatoes and a fruit plate for dessert.

The Coq au Vin was delicious. Those that had the fish said it was really good. I had ordered a Sprite for a drink and a tour mate I had given cough drops to paid for it. So I handed him another tray of cough drops. I didn’t eat much of the fruit plate as the sorbet on top had melted through it and it was a really tart sorbet. I did try the twig that was sitting on top.

At least it looked like a twig. It was a pure cocoa twig. Heh.

We stood around outside for awhile then reboarded for the trip back. Nellie announced the official times. Get up when you want but have our bags out by 9 am and be on the bus by 10:30.

I will make every effort to sleep till 9.

Go to Day Eleven

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