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We arrived back to Christchurch around 6pm and all the lads were out watching a rugby match they had tickets for, but they left a key out for us. So we cooked our dinner, then went and picked the boys up when they had finished. We then just had a chilled Friday night watching films etc ready for a night out tomorrow and so we could wake up early the next day!
We set alarms for just before 7am so we could wake up and watch the England football game vs Peru. We are 11 hours ahead here so the match was 8pm Friday night in England. Skaj had a football match Saturday afternoon, so after we got up and had breakfast we went to watch him play. The level of football is not as good as in England and Skaj's team ended up losing 2-1 and he had to come off with an injury… as he had not long had a knee operation. We then went to the shop on the way back to get some beers for the evening and some food to cook dinner.
After everyone was ready we started drinking and playing pool on the table they have in the house and waited for everyone to start turning up. There were around 15 of us in the end, some English, Irish and some Kiwi's, who the boys had made friends with from work, football etc since they've lived in NZ. After playing pool and drinking for a while we all headed out. We started in a bar where Fozzy works as a chef, and he sorted us out a lot of free drinks! Then we went to a few different areas and bars in Christchurch before heading home at the end of the night.
Sunday morning we set an alarm and woke up just before 9am to watch the boxing ( it was on at 10pm in England ). The fight was a big one with the rematch of Froch vs Groves and was well worth getting up early for. We spent the rest of the day chilling as we were all pretty hangover. Usually the boys have work on Monday but it was a bank holiday for the Queen's Birthday ( which we don't even get in the UK) !! So they were looking forward to another day off and were going to show us around the city a bit.
It was a nice sunny day on the bank holiday Monday so we had a sort of 'family day out' and we all set off to see a bit more of Christchurch. First we went to the highest point in the city called Cashmere Hill. At the top of here you can see 360 degree views of the whole city and the bays below. Tim, Lloyd, Ollie and Skaj went a bit higher than the others by climbing up some cliffs to get an even better view. After chilling there for a while we went on a little tour of the city to see all the buildings that had been destroyed by the large earthquake about three years ago. It was really strange as whole roads were just destroyed and a lot of buildings are collapsed and are still left in their bad state. The government don't put a lot of money into renovating it so it is going to be a very slow process to rebuild it all! There are lots of closed roads and diversions, and we also saw a huge cathedral with half of it just fallen down! Looking online it turned out there were 5 small earthquakes whilst we were in Christchurch, but we didn't feel anything. The lads said they happen all the time. After that we went to the supermarket to get stuff for dinner and had another chilled evening, as Skaj, Fozzy and Ollie were back at work tomorrow!
Ollie had recommended another place to check out while we were here, so whilst they all went to work on the Tuesday we went with Nathan and Shaun to have a look. The place was called Taylor's Mistake and has a really nice walk along the coast for about an hour each way. On the way there we saw more areas the earthquake had destroyed, with large cliffs fallen away and you could see abandoned houses still hanging half off! When we got there we were heading on the walk to a place called Boulder Bay to see if we could see the White-Flippered Penguins that are only found around these areas. When we got there we could see a few birds that looked like it could be them, but after Googling what they look like…. It wasn't them! We met an old German couple who were walking around too, and they said it was the wrong season for them to be there unfortunately.
We headed back and cooked dinner for everyone and had another early night as we had to be up early tomorrow. We were dropping Nathan and Shaun to the airport in the morning, as they are flying to Auckland where we will meet them again in a few days and hopefully all watch the rugby together. Then we were driving up to Picton to catch the ferry back to Wellington in the North Island.
As we got about 15 mins away from the ferry terminal at Picton, we saw a hitchhiker walking along with a sign saying 'PICTON'. We had talked about maybe picking one up one day, and as we were only 15 mins away we thought this would be good as if they were a bit weird it wouldn't be a long journey! We turned round to pick them up and noticed it was actually a hot young traveller girl so we were in luck! However, just as we turned back to get her a lorry had already pulled up and she got in that. We were a bit gutted as it would have been another experience to tick off but oh well!
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