Christchurch
After my money fiasco, I boarded the plane and left for Christchurch. The passengers next to me were an old couple visiting their grandchildren. They chuckled at me in the beginning because for a moment I though I had left my phone behind, not that my cell phone actually works. All I can do is text.
Once in Christchurch I wandered around the square and went to dinner at the Tandoori Palace, a cheep but good Indian restaurant. Sitting alone for dinner two old couples joined me. Max, the alpha male initiated the conversation by asking me if the food was good. That moment I was enjoying a lamb Masala so I replied, “the food is good thank you”
I ignored them for a while but I had a nagging question that bothers most Americans. So, I asked “Do you tip here?”
Max smiled and said “no”.
Soon after I had joined tables them, we started talking about health care. George, the other male in the group, had previously suffered a heart attack and had literally died on the table with a blood pressure of zero. According to Max, this would not have happened if George had not been on the wait list for heart surgery. Apparently, New Zealand is good at emergency medicine, fixing your arm or leg if you had an accident, but needs a lot of improvement on long-term treatment and specialty medicine such as cardiology.
cargo containers to other countries around the world. His wife Ann was a dentist at a school. All children in new Zealand are provided free dental care.
I met up with them the next night.
The next day I woke at eight, had a small breakfast at the Cathedral Café and called a paragliding company about the weather conditions.
They picked me up at 10:00 and drove me into the hills. The ride up already had excellent views of the city. The van, a clunker did not give a good impression of professionalism there were old broken helmets hanging on a bar behind the passenger and drivers seats. However, their equipment looked will maintained and I felt reassured.
We stopped by the side of the road close to a much nicer van from another paragliding company.
Carrying my harness, we hiked up a hill. Steve, the pilot was not only lugging a harness but also a large bad containing the parasail.
Once up the hill the pilots, we had followed the other group up, checked the wind. We ended up switching from the lakeside of the hill to the residential and off we went.
The other group started first.
Walking, then running, pulling the strings so that the sail would catch the air, we were off.
We swooped low across the ground until we reached a croup of rocks were thermals were present and we started rising further from the ground. At the highest point, people became the size of pushpins. Then slowly we started to go down.
We landed running.
With the paragliding at an end I traveled with Steve and his wife to Sumter for lunch and learned he was previously and electrician in the air force.
Sumter is a beach area, the rest of the early afternoon involved walking for over an hour down the street taking in the view. There was a massive rock with a tunnel through it that was slowly created by smashing waved. I climbed the steps, carved into the volcanic rock, to the top. You could see all across the beech all the way to central Christchurch.
Walking along the beach the water was clear and blue green, talking previously to Steve that was due to the green lettuce seaweed that was rowing in the delta. Looking at the water then, I disagreed. The color was in the water. The next day the tour guide Scotty explained that it was from particles of rock that melted away with the glacial ice. I believe these particles traveled all the way to the ocean were it merged with the saltwater.
I traveled back to the center of Christchurch by buss. That did not go so well, the buss driver charged me $7.50 for the ride apparently assuming that I wanted to go to the airport. According to a local, he overcharged me by more than half. I filed a request for reinvestment; apparently, the buss station did not have the cash in hand to reimburse me on the spot.
After that fiasco, I was wondering around cathedral square christmas shopping when race cars started driving onto the court. Seeing someone talking to a driver, I approached him. The guy was carrying a star bucks coffee cup and when I asked him what was going on. I was surprised to hear an American accent. Brian was from Boston and was on his way to Antarctica for the summer to work as an electrician and hopefully go skiing. A democrat as well, we discussed politics and watched what was apparently the start of a car rally, a long distance of road car race.
That night as I tried to sleep an aftershock hit Christchurch.
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