Hello all.  We arrived in Christchurch on Tuesday the 9^th. We like it here. The city is a more manageable size. Auckland, while a great city is VERY big. Christchurch is much more our size. There is construction going on everywhere. Remember this city was hit with a devastating earth quake in 2011. They are still very much rebuilding. Any tall building, say over 6 floors are empty and scheduled to be pulled down. But the city is busy and the Christmas shoppers are out in force.  Below are a few scenes of “downtown” Christchurch.

We went grocery shopping after we arrived and were treated to a beautiful sun set.

Here is our new home away from home.  Cherry tree cottage.  It’s  really nice place and set way back from the road as you can see below so it is nice and quiet.

The Stacey’s house is back on the left and the cottage is straight back attached to the garage.  It looks like we will be here until, maybe the 9th of Jan.

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Wednesday and Thursday we just sort of settled into our new place. It’s a very cute little one bedroom like our last pace but is a bit bigger with a bit more furniture and a dresser.  So we can actually put our underwear and socks in a drawer.  🙂  It’s the little things.

Thursday we bought a car, a 2005 Subaru Legacy. Yup we bought a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car. 🙂 We will pick it up on Monday the 15^th. Actually it will be nice to have a REAL car and not some POS rental car.

Our new wheels.  We will pick it up tomorrow, Monday.

Yesterday, Friday we drove a ½ hour south/east of Christchurch to a place called Godley Head Preserve. This is a large, beautiful point of land that forms the mouth of Whakaraupo harbor. It has a 2 hour hike around the point with a great view of the harbor and then wraps around with the pacific ocean to the east. We did the hike which terminates at Taylor’s Mistake beach. When we got home we looked up “Taylor’s Mistake” to find out just what was his big mistake. It turns out he was a ships captain that, at night mistook the beach as a passage into the harbor. Oops. The hike was really beautiful. Sorry Taylor.

A view of Whakaraupo harbor from the trail head parking lot.  The views from up there we spectacular.

The Pacific Ocean looking north.  Next stop North America.  Oh Fiji is on the way.  Be sure to stop there.  🙂

Getting artsy with the camera again.

Taylor’s Mistake beach.  Our hikes destination.  We did not bring swim gear but wish we had.  It is a nice little beach.

As we sat down at Taylor’s Mistake beach to eat our lunches we were descended upon by gulls.  Check out this guys red legs and feet.

Taylor’s Mistake beach from the road back to Christchurch.

Looking towards Christchurch from the road home.

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Today we drove an hour to the township of Waipara to do a very obscure hike to see some Maori cave art. The hike was very interesting but cold. In the low 60’s. No real trail, just some yellow markers on fence posts that mark the trail. We were hiking through cow and sheep pastures These pastures were on several large hills with cows and cow patties all around. Not your traditional hike but it was fun. The cave art was pretty cool too. It was a good day.

This was the hike.  Just follow the fence up over this hill and then the next.  While you can not see them in the photo there are cows up there.

Sheep, sheep everywhere.

Making our way to the top.

At last we made it to the Maori art work caves.

One of the more interesting drawings.  One VERY sad fact we learned about the drawings is that they were originally done in charcoal by the Maori.  However in the 1920’s the “director” of a museum had some of the drawing painted over with black and red house paint.  You have got to wonder.

A panorama from the top of the hill.  Just a beautiful place.  Just watch out for the cows.

On the way home I had to stop and take this.  I didn’t know they had named a town and park after me.  🙂