Christchurch, 6th - 9th August 2010

Travelling down

We got up oh so early (well for us anyway - about 8am) and caught the shuttle to the Ferry terminal. We bumped into a lad called Mike who was one of the people on the Magic bus that had booked the same rugby package as us due to the amount of noise we'd been making about it.As he would be the only guy in our group and as he was from ozstraya or Australia as any normal person would say, we decided to call him 'Mike the Mascot'. He wasn't thrilled about it, but he didn't really have any choice in the matter - we figured there was less chance of him getting beaten up. Hehehe.

The Ferry crossing from Wellington to Picton is one of the most scenic in the world. As luck would have it we picked one of only 2 good weather days they've had in 2 weeks - result! :) Apparently a couple of days before they had 130km winds and 12 meter swells! Personally, I think I would have looked into flying.

The ferry crossing was stunning, the waters were a really deep yet bright blue and we were sailing through a passageway surrounded by green hills. Hahaha do you reckon I could get David Attenborough's job yet? :)

We then got the train from Picton down to Christchurch which ran right along the coastline. The three of us nearly had a heart attack when we first saw the train as we could only see the observation car - the one with no windows! Selena & I thought we'd get some pics from this windowless car for old time's sake. Thank god we dressed up warm - no need for Air Conditioning here.We both nearly took our fingers off trying to open the little hobbit doors and nearly put our backs out whilst bending down to open them as they were between the carriages and the floor was moving every few seconds. On a Politically correct note though, how comes they always cater for the small people and not tall ones? They could give the hobbit creatures a step or mini ladder, I'm sure it would be safer than a tall person having to almost kneel down to open them and then jump quickly out of the way.

Drinks Friday night

Anyway, we arrived in Christchurch, dumped our bags in the room and went out to get something to eat.

We found an English pub, got Fish & Chips and had a few bevies before heading off into town. Now we had warned Mike that if he came out with us he would be introduced to every freak that currently resides in Christchurch as we are like magnets and he thought we were joking. It didn't take long before our freakzoid magnetic pull started to work its magic!

We went back to the hostel for some cheap drinks, where some 40 something bloke came and introduced himself and took a seat. Oh great! He then beckoned the rest of his mates over (seriously we're almost talking a SAGA convention here). Well one of the SAGA guys said they were all Policemen and the others said they worked for the Government. I didn't really care, and cared even less when they started making weird hand signals to each other thinking they were on a covert operation or something. Absolute dickheads. We left our drinks, them and the bar and headed off to a bar called Shooters.

This one was ok, but there weren't many people in it and the music was diabolical so we went in search of some decent tunage.

We found a street full of different bars and clubs, and we found a club with decent music, but as our luck would have it the people in it (and I don't mean us) should have been on some kind of reality TV programme!

Here is a list of Friday night's contestants:

• Short gay boys (this is a descriptive phrase of an actual event and not a derogatory remark before anyone starts) :)
• Even shorter gay boys who thought they could dance and insisted on having dance offs all night
• 40 year old women who should be auditioning for Harry Potter
• A selection of Ape men
• The Brazilian beast who had a 6 second memory

So as I'm sure you can imagine the evening consisted of drinking heavily, dancing and doing my upmost to avoid the freaks. One of the short gay dance off boys came and sat next to me and tried to get me on the dance floor. I just turned and starred at him and he quickly departed. He said to Selena that he thought I was going to hit him - she said 'I think you may be right' hahaha. Seriously, this is my dance space, that is your dance space - remember that and we'll get along fine! We stayed there til about 2am until The Brazilian Beast started talking to me again and for the 3rd time that evening asked where I was from. Not surprisingly it was at this point in the evening that I announced I absolutely could not take anymore and needed to leave.

Preparations for the rugby

The following morning Selena & I went back to the English pub for a good olde fry up and then went shopping to find our All Blacks T-shirts. We headed back and started getting ready and met all of the girls (and Mike) in the hostel's bar.

All Blacks vs Australia

Wow, wow, wow :)

To see the All Blacks play in New Zealand has been on my bucket list since the very beginning, but I never actually thought I'd ever get to do it.

We were expecting to be seated in the furthest corner possible, but were only about 15 rows back so had a wicked view. :) When we got there the All Blacks and the Aussies were training on the field and even in training the All Blacks looked frickin mean! Once they had both sung their National Anthems, the Aussies stood in a line and the All Blacks did the Haka. So cool!

It was pretty cold and started raining but we drank through it, the whole stadium did a Mexican wave which went round 4 or 5 times, a few of us were accidently squirted with a sachet of Tomato sauce from the guy behind (I made him wipe it all off of my coat) and Selena was being stalked by a blood nut who soooo needed to put some deodorant on. The score was pretty even the first half, but they finished All Blacks 20 - 10 Aussies. All in all a pretty good game. :)

We walked back to the hostel and carried on the nights drinking in the bar. It was such a good night and we all partied and danced the night away. I actually drank myself sober, not before showing a guy who thought he was a bit of alright on a pole they had in there how to do it properly! How I didn't break something I have no idea!

Xx.