Bryan from Auckland

Our last day in New Zealand was pretty much our only day that was solely urban. We did have one recovery day in Christchurch, but we really didn’t see much of it.

The mission for today was souvenir shopping. Bethany’s parents had a specific request. We should have stopped earlier – we probably paid a little bit more here.

We walked through the University and a central park on the way to downtown. The University was in its 6 week summer session so it wasn’t particularly busy. It was interesting to see a Marae (a Maori sacred house) on the campus.

The park included a bunch of strange shaped tree. On one of them you could grab the top of the tree, swing up and climb “down” to the base. We figured these configurations were just a property of the native trees, but the oaks were all weird too.

After shopping all afternoon we headed back to the hotel to dress up for dinner, our last meal in New Zealand. Naturally it was a wonderful lamb dinner.