Country number 9 - Aotearoa - Land of the Long White Cloud

A short flight but a whole different country. After a three-hour journey from Sydney to Christchurch, (roughly the same duration as Sydney-Cairns), over the Tasman Sea and the Snow-capped mountains we landed in New Zealand. On the way to our centrally located Guesthouse, the first thing that struck us was how British Christchurch looks, especially compared to Sydney. Half of the trees and plants looked like they'd been stolen from England, which in fact they have. The weather as well was decidedly cooler than what we'd been used to for the previous 10 months, so it really felt like our first steps home.

The other thing that amazed us after our arrival was how many tourists there were in Christchurch. We went to the public information centre to enquire about further accomodation and we were basically told we'd find it difficult (we'd only booked our first night). What followed was about three hours spent walking, phoning, and enquiring as to availabilty for accomodation which was the first time we'd experienced anything like this in all of our time travelling. Anyway, thanks to I-Site (NZ tourist info office's) we had somewhere to base ourselves for the next few days and instead of really 'explore' Christchurch this experience led to us planning the following 30 days of travel.

In all honesty, we did manage to see some of Christchurch and it struck us as quite an attractive town (though i think it qualifies as a city in NZ) with its own unique personality. However, with our (now) 26 days left in NZ we had to hit the road, with the first stop Te Anau..

written by

Priya&Tim on February 23, 2007 from Christchurch, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Cheeky Round The World Trip

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