So these posts are very late. It’s been a busy 10 days getting things sorted and having a great time with our friends in Christchurch.

Ingrid has been on mission to make sure we don’t leave New Zealand malnourished after our 4 weeks on camp food and sugar. She stopped in at a South African butcher and picked up some mouth-watering biltong and the biggest piece of steak I have ever seen. We also had a chance to check out one of the local supermarkets and were impressed with the selection – especially the breads, meat, fruit and most importantly biscuits. The shop also had an ‘International’ section with two shelves stuffed with SAFA ‘specialties’ like Zoo biscuits, Pro-nutro, Nik-Naks and alike. Expensive, but brilliant.

We came across some odd fruit as well. The Kiwano, according to the sign, tastes like a mixture of banana and lemon. Such an odd looking thing, but just like a Dragon Fruit it looked much more interesting than it tasted. We found it on Wikipedia – turns out this ‘Product of New Zealand’ is really an African horned Mellon, part of the cucumber family – yuk!

The plan on the weekend was to pop out to a beach and have a braai. ‘Popping’ out with two kids and two guests seemed a daunting task to us by the Ewegs’ took it in their stride. Two (to continue the theme) car loads of stuff including fishing rods, chairs, prams, bicycles and the weber headed off to Governors Bay. The temperature was above 37C aided by a nasty berg wind – so the perfect day for a cool bay. The bay was busy, but not in the UK/SA sense of the word. Unfortunately the braai was a no go. NZ has some very strict ‘No Fire’ policies. John and both girls had a ball in the calm water – too cold for us wimps. We are going to have to get wet-suits!

John was kind enough to loan us a car for the week so we got to check out Christchurch. We spent an entire day cruising the neighborhoods of the city just getting to know the place. It’s small but has everything we need. Lots of green space and the ‘old’ centre make the place picturesque. Most importantly we scouted the gear shops. Outdoor, Climbing, snowboarding and mountain biking – plenty of choice and a comparison of the snowboarding gear shows it’s the same price as Backcountry (when it’s on special). Happeeeeness. The local climbing gym is great – I loved the textured walls and the grigri fixed to every toprope.

Later in the week (while John’s car was in for service) we decided to test the public transport. As expected it works brilliantly and is complete with online system that tells you exactly how to get around. After a short stop at a great little coffee shop / roastery we headed into the botanic gardens and museum. The museum was fantastic, free and truly first class with some interesting oddities – like Fred and Myrtle’s Paui shell house. My favorite exhibit was the Antarctic exploration one, pity it’s temporary. The bus ride back home was different. The bus driver instantly picked up V’s accent and greeted us in Afrikaans. We couldn’t help smiling as he whistled ‘In the Jungle’ and ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ all the way home.

A huge braai at an old associate of V’s with a bunch of friendly Kiwis and a couple SAFAs capped a brilliant week. New Zealand has been great and we’ll have to write a little more about it but we just want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Ingrid and John for just being so awesome. Tomorrow we board a plane back to SA and our wandering is officially over 🙁 … For now 🙂

[Pictures: Wierd fruit and SAFA essentials. Punting on the Avon! They think they are in Cambridge and near the botanic gardens. Some ‘old’ looking street]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi