Weekend in Christchurch
This weekend Wayne and I flew to Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand. Quinn stayed with some friends and had a wonderful time.
We stayed at a B&B called Onuku, which had almost 360 views of the city, ocean and mountains.
On Saturday, Wayne and I drove to a little French settlement called Akaroa. We took the scenic route to get there. The views were stunning.
In Akaroa, we took a two hour cruise and saw seals and Hectors Dolphins, which are the smallest dolphins in the world. Their top fin looks like a Mickey Mouse ear and their body like a gray rugby ball.
After our day of cruising/shopping, we drove back to Chrischurch so Wayne could do his new hobby…finding and planting Geo Caches using his GPS. To find out more about what Geo Caching is you can visit this website:
www.geocaching.com
Wayne was so excited because he found his first Geo Cache ever in Christchurch. To find it he had to go off the beaten track and even go halfway into a cave. What he found was a lambie travel bug who started his journey in the UK and was trying to get home to Lower Hutt, NZ, which is a suburb of Wellington. The reason why Wayne chose to go after this Geo Cache was so he could complete the journey home for the travel bug. Congrats Wayne!
On Sunday, we spent the morning at Onuku, where we had another fabulous breakfast and watched the All Blacks rugby game vs. France. The All Blacks embarassed the French beating them 47 to 3. (Wayne will share more about this.)
After the game, we went to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens and walked around until early afternoon. While we were there, we went punting down the Avon River.
We also ventured downtown to the City Square to visit the Chirstchurch Cathedral.
Since our flight back to Wellington didn’t leave until around 10:00 that evening, we decided that we would have enough time to drive up the East coast a bit to try and find some wineries. Our host at Onuku recommended Pegasus Winery. We, however, didn’t have a map of the local wineries with us, but just happened to drive by it. So, we turned around and made it there JUST IN TIME to order a glass of wine before they shut down the register for the night. Wayne ordered a wonderful Riesling 2001, and I ordered a nice glass of Pinot 2004. We our wine outside, where we soaked up the rest of the daylight sun, and enjoyed the beautiful suroundings.
We mapped the location of this winery in hopes of coming here again with both sets of parents and Ed and Ruth.
The weekend was relaxing and we both really enjoyed getting away from city life, but we were ready to get back to Wellington…we missed our boy!!!
(There will probably be more pictures to come from this trip, we were only there for two days and took about 550 pictures. It is amazing there are none of Quinn in there. We will go more up of him VERY soon!)