So... cold!

I know... I'm ashamed to call myself a Canadian. It was 14 degrees when I got here in New Zealand, and yesterday was colder... and windy and rainy and I was freezing. After a walk, I tried to play some guitar back at the hostel, but my fingers wouldn't move properly. My typing was down to 20 words a minute yesterday instead of 80ish... and people in my dorm room were complaining that my teeth chattering was keeping them awake.

Okay maybe not that last one. But I was cold. Hehe, moan moan moan. This is no longer a travel blog, it's my private moaning log.

Anyways, its a lot nicer today, about 20 out, and mostly sunny. So I'm happy. Christchurch is... well, mostly the same as any Australian town I've been in, except for minor differences. They sell beer (really cheap beer too... Marc, we're in trouble) at the supermarkets, and there's a lot more prostitutes out at night than you'd expect in a city called Christchurch. (And I thought I was cold... the way they're dressed...hehe) A picture anyways (not of the prostitutes)... here's their sad attempt at a Christmas tree in Cathedral Square...



Got my short-term plans figured out... going to take a bus to Queenstown tomorrow and meet up with Marc and Dani. Christchurch is nice, but I wanna see some scenery. Plus I'm in a 38 bed dorm at a hostel here. It's unreal... first on my shopping list this afternoon are some earplugs :)

So, New Years was pretty quiet for me this year, I ended up hanging out with Anette at my hostel, (I wasn't allowed in hers...bah!) cooked us some dinner and then went out to an Irish pub with her and an Aussie friend, then went and watched the fireworks by the lagoon. I was in bed by 1:00... pretty sad again, I know. Here's the lagoon in Cairns.. I forgot my camera New Years and didn't get any fireworks shots... ah well.



Went out and did some snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef while I was in Cairns too, that was pretty good. I went out on a sailboat that used to be a pearl lugger... my pearl boat was a little more comfortable than this! Only got a couple hours snorkelling in though, unfortunately. It wasn't exactly an advanced group I was with... once we got out to the reef and they went through all the safety talk, everyone was still kind of standing around like they didn't know what to do. I hopped in the water, where I got yelled at for going out too far. (About 50 metres. sigh) When I went back to the boat an hour or so later, everyone was clustered in little groups around the boat, most of them swimming in circles with pool noodles. Later we had a group swim (!) from a sandbar to the boat... and I got yelled at for getting too far away from the group. Ah well.

Oh yeah, a bit of dumbassery for you! I missed my flight in Cairns... haha. I got to the check-in counter an hour early, but before I could get on the flight I had to show proof that I had a flight out of New Zealand. I had my ticket, of course... but the original return date out of Auckland was back in September.. I'd changed the date to February back in July and didn't print off a new itinerary. So, I had to call up the airline and get them to fax it to me, but it got there 5 minutes after the flight closed. Sigh. No harm done anyways, I got on the next flight that went to Sydney first instead of Brisbane at no extra cost, and got into Christchurch half an hour later than I would have on the original flight.

Check out new features too! I put maps of Australia and New Zealand in over on the sidebar so you can see where everything is that I'm talking about. I didn't have a clue where anything was in New Zealand before I got here... I only found out where Christchurch actually was a couple days before I flew out. haha

Anyways... I'm off to wander around town some more.

-Brad