Christchurch to Dunedin

A late night visit to a convenience store on the night we flew into Christchurch revealed that bananas - $12 bucks a go back in Oz due to a storm last year - could be procured for $3(NZ) per kilo. Bugger the pub, we thought. We stood outside on the street ramming bananas into our faces instead. This was a bigger moment than it may sound, as it has been so long since I had a fresh banana. They are like gold.




















Apart from that Christchurch was fairly uninspiring - we were only there because that's where JetStar had dropped us off. We did a quick circuit of the Gallery (some pretty cool lithographs and an inflatable plastic bag installation) and the Art Centre (some very expensive wood carvings - $300 for a coaster), and had a nice photo taken in front of a sculpture by a lost-looking South Korean dude in search of his passport. I am proudly sporting my bright red 70s op shop raincoat. It is incredibly useful and practical, thank you very much! And I think it rocks.
















Now we are in beautiful Dunedin, which looks like West Hobart.















We took a midnight stroll on the first night and got some brilliant photos of its undulating hills, lush scrub and some of the spectacular gothic weatherboard architecture - all lit up by the full moon. We're staying in this creepy looking Victorian house which used to be a hospital. It's creaking with atmosphere, as you'd expect from a building with such a past; and there are spectacular views out to the peninsula, a large, clean kitchen and a pretty clued up Swiss-German host. As for the lost souls of its former incarnation, I slept like the dead myself on the first night - so they didn't get a look in.




















In terms of food we've been pretty economical, as is to be expected with Muir running his squeaky ship. We went to 'New World', a mammoth NZ supermarket and bought some tuna, some baked beans and some rolls (along with the requisite 50 bananas which we still have not tired of) - and we'll be eating this shit for the next five days if it kills us (or Chris anyway). Boo. I know we're having the leftovers of a really average tuna pasta tonight, and the thought of it is making me a bit grizzly.

We spent half this morning trawling around the Op Shops looking for a belt for Chris - he'd left his at home and his jeans were dragging in puddles. The weather has been overcast for virtually the entire time we've been here, with non-stop drizzle and cold wind, but we both agree that it's better than sweating lethargically through each day and getting burnt. We popped into an internet cafe to check that the Australian Labour Party had not taken leave of its senses and kept the hapless Kim Beazley on as leader, and, once satisfied that this was not the case, walked up Baldwin Street, officially the 'World's Steepest Street', which was worth the effort for the view. Chris rolled an orange down it, but the momentum was too great for my soft, pathetic hands, and it blasted through them and down to the bottom where it smashed to a pulp. Cool stuff. I also proved to Chris my assertion that NZ school children go barefoot to school and back, as a couple of little bare footed hobbits boarded our bus.

All the Kiwis we've met have laid on the friendliness, as expected, except for an arking bus driver who snarled 'I'm not Citibank' at me when I dared to present him with the grand sum of $20 for my bus fare. Later, he barked at the hobbits who were spending too long squabbling with one foot on the bus, and not enough time paying their exact fares to him. Chris and I, inspired by the bus driver's bad humour, then had a little blue ourselves, just a silly one, and we now find ourselves having a rather sour coffee at a free internet cafe before we go home to force down yesterday's tuna pasta bake.