January 1, 2009

Bethany from Christchurch

Happy New Year! As I write this, everyone should have joined Bryan and I in 2009. It seems strange to be a day ahead of our friends and family. That and it is summer.

Bryan and I are spending this evening in our cute and modern cubbyhnole of a room in the Hotel SO. So far I highly recommend this experience as long as you don’t like spacious rooms. This room is small but well layed out and full of all the amenities we would want. Plus free wireless internet and there are laundry facilities. We are waiting for a call to go collect our tapas take-away. Hope the food meets expectation. I couldn’t convince Bryan to leave the room tonight. We have cable TV, which we don’t even have at home.

So my blogging was interrupted by the call to pick up thed food. They do take-away here but not room service. Really just as convenient as you can phone down to order and they phone when it is ready. My favorite dish was beet and goat cheese bruschetta which was Bryan’s least favorite because everything else was so good.

Today we woke in Dunedin and after some deliberation decided that our time in the deep south was over. Not because we did not like Dunedin or that there was nothing to do (although on New Year’s Day lots was closed), but because there is so much more we wish to do with our remaining time.

So we attempted to rent a car but ran into New Year’s Day problems and in the end caught a bus to Christchurch, the largest city on thed South Island. The 400 km drive took about 6 hours and took us through the Canterbury Plains – sea on one side and mountains on the other. The land was relatively flat and mixed-use agricultural. Bryan and I, like true farm kids, admired the crops which are lush and thick and will probably yield more than we could ever dream of from our SK land. The few flax and canola fields we saw were in full bloom. As for the pastures,the area is mostly sheep with some cattle. South of Queenstown we had seen a lot of deer – which did not surprise us as venison was featured prominently in menus. Bryan was surprised by the amount of irrigation on the pasture land.

So that was basically our day. Happy New Year!