I live in Ilam apartments, which is not university run. But it’s pretty cool. We have a stove top and a convection microwave which I have yet to use because it has been broken :/ I’m pretty excited though, because I bought ‘real’ food yesterday! I’ve been living off beans with cheese on toast, Ramen and free sausages. I’ve become pretty skilled at finding free food in and around campus. So far I’ve been doing about one free meal a day ;) Though I think if I eat to many more sausages, I may turn into a sausage.
The first couple of days last week was your basic orientation. NZ has a lot of laws and regulations regarding what Uni has to do with international students and students in general for orientation. The two days were filled with talks about safety, registration, orientation stuff, where the library is, library tour, you all know the drill. The Wednesday I registered for classes and did some shopping. Thursday was great, we had all pretty much finished with registration so we went to Sumner beach. The day was beautiful and sunny. We played some football with random kiwi guys on the beach (a few whom I have seen a few times after, small world?) and just generally laid around. It was a great day.
Friday
The apartment complex gave everyone (or at least international students) a voucher for this trip called ‘The Grand Tour’. It was valued at about $100 and was a bus tour with a punting ride, gondola ride, and trolley ride; so a few of us used that on Friday. It was pretty nice, geared definitely for an older crowd. We were the youngest on the bus by at least 35 years, and most people were over 50. It was really laid back and we didn’t get to do much hiking but rather a lot of riding and watching.
Punting was great, it is the English equivalent to the Italian gondola ride. But this boat did not have the huge sweeping bit on the back, and the punter stood on the back. The ride was only about 25 minutes, we went up the Avon River for a bit and back down it. The Avon River is more of a stream in my humble opinon. It is very shallow, maybe a meter in the deepest parts. But it is a spring fed stream that starts up by the airport. I actually cross over it on my way to class in the morning (at that point it is maybe two feet wide and a foot deep). But it was very relaxing and enjoyable to see the many ducks, swallows and plants. There are these cute little brown diving ducks that would just pop up besides us all confused eating some weeds. We were all expecting one to hit the bottom of our boat coming up! Our punter, Martin, was about our age and has been traveling around the world with his girlfriend working here and there. He was fun to talk to.
Nicole and Damon with Martin in the background
After punting, we drove around Christchurch. The tour guide was kinda boring and we were all tired so I napped. I woke up when we got to the Gondola ride. The gondola was essentially a little closed ski lift that took us up the foot hills to an observation station. Views from it were phenomenal. We could see Christchurch, the Red Hills and Lyttleton harbor. We took a ’30’ min walk down to an outlook, but it really took us about 10 minutes (like I said, it was geared to the older individuals on the trip). But the view was pretty awesome.
View from the 30 min walk
a
Looking up the Gondola ride
View of Lyttleton Harbor from the observation deck
The bus ride back to Christchurch had some great views and we went through the longest tunnel in NZ. We stopped by Sumner (our third time that week) to have some lunch. This is where I had my first meat pie. It was steak and cheese and soo good! We purchased them at a bakery and ate them on the beach. We were surrounded by seagulls the entire time of course. But totally worth it. And would you believe it, but we saw Gaines, my one flat mate, at the beach! Like I said, small world.
The trolley ride in Christchurch was lame, but exploring the square was fun. We saw this iconic speaker who apparently has his own Wiki article! He has been speaking to the people every day for the past 40 years, has sponsors and an important message about ‘the man’. This prophet’s name you ask? The Wizard of Christchurch Square. Haha. It was hilarious. We also walked around a cute little market on the square.
The Wizard of Christchurch Square
Chess at the Square
Saturday
So today we decided to try a trail we had heard about and seen yesterday. It’s called Bridal Trail and starts in Lyttleton and goes up the foothills and down the other side. Originally it was used by settlers traveling from the port to Christchurch. Now when I say foothills, don’t think of hills, but rather mountains (by PA standards mind you). The trail was a steep (about 50 degree angle most of the time) and about 1.5 miles long. I was not ready and it kicked my butt. But I made it to the top. We ended a little bit away from the observation tower from yesterday. Instead of going down the other side to Christchurch, we took a left and headed up Summit Road to Castle Rock.
Castle Rock was awesome; it’s a pretty significant outcropping of rocks. The first half was really easy to scramble up. This is where we enjoyed out meager lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and carrots; though Damon had the brilliant idea of draining and bringing Ramen in an old peanut butter jar. I was jealous. Then Jon and Damon went out the rest of the way to the very edge. They came back and us girls went. It was so much fun! Like a giant jungle gym, except made of big rocks, and the drop was pretty high, and was a steep hill that went to a ravine, and it wasn’t recess. Not going to lie, when I stood on the ‘summit’ I was pretty scared. In some of the pictures you can totally see this. But hey, I did it.
On top of Castle Rock
When we climbed back down and got to the road, a guy Jon met told us how to get to Sumner beach. He said it was only a few kilometres and we should get there quickly if we took Summit road and just ‘followed’ our noses to the ocean. Haha. We looked at each other, and said heck yes we’ll do it! I’ll take this moment to say that there was bus stop just down the other side of the hill where the gondola started from yesterday. And thus we began walking.
And we walked. Walked some more.
Walking.
More walking.
Some more walking.
And then we came to a field where we could finally see Sumner. This is where things got interesting. We were sick of walking on the road and this field looked like a shortcut. Summit road from our view looked like it followed the summit of course and this was a very indirect route that went around and down. So we went off the road and jumped a barbed wire fence into the field. Then bam, grass up to our necks, holes and ditches everywhere. Some of us were nervous about getting in trouble for trespassing and didn’t like the super high grass and unseen obstacles. So everyone but Damon and I turned back.
The field was tough to navigate with the high grass and it was extremely steep and there were no signs that it would level out any time soon. I fell a lot, but because there was so much grass it wasn’t bad at all. When I fell, I wouldn’t be able to see much of anything but grass, and the one time that Damon fell I couldn’t even see him. It was going pretty well, until we got to a cliff. It was really sever and there was no way we could climb down. So we went more to the right, still more cliff. No matter how far to the right we got, there was cliff. Finally we climbed down a bit of it, got to a little ravine that had a stream and went up the other side a bit. This way we found we could go around the cliff. Little did we know that this was the ‘pre cliff’. We saw a mountain bike path and saw a guy go flying around a turn below us, so Damon scuttled down a bit to the edge of this pretty significant cliff to see if he could find a way down. No go: ( At this point we were nervous and thought that we had bitten off more than we could chew. There seemed to be no way down, and the hill behind us was so steep that it would take us at least 3 times the time it took us to get down (which was an hour at this point).
We had no choice it seemed but to keep going on the one far hill side. Then, all of a sudden as we went around a turn and over another barbed wire fence did we see a trail! We were so happy. The trail was a walking / biking trail and we took it to Sumnerville. Somehow we lost this trail and ended up in someone’s horse field. I fed the two beautiful chestnut horses the last of my carrost. But the wanted more and they started so surround me acting a little to friendly, so we booked it out of there. When we saw the street, it was amazing. We agreed that this trailblazing was fun, but next time we’ll stick to the trails.
Amazingly, we found the other 4 about 20 meters ahead of us!
So 7 miles and 3 hours later we finally got to the beach. But we were all so tired that we just fell asleep for an hour, woke up, and took the bus home.
All in total, that day we walked about 10 miles. Pretty good for our first Saturday in New Zealand
Sunday
After our epic Saturday, we decided that we would take it easy and just go hang out at the beach. The weather was suppose to be phenomenal, so we wanted to make this trip extra special and pick somewhere that was different. Soon we decided upon Taylors Mistake. It was a short ways away from Sumner tucked away in a nice small bay. It was named after Captain Taylor who mistook it for Lyttleton (or Sumner, I don’t remember) and got his ship stuck.
In our true fashion, no one really planned exactly how we would get there. We quickly looked at a Metro map and found the bus that got us closest. While on the bus, I was nominated to ask the drive the best way to get there. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, thankfully a sweet older lady was sitting there and told me that she would show us. I thought she meant just the stop. But like most New Zealanders I have met, she was extremely kind and after dropping her bags at her house which was on there was and the cutest beach house ever, she took us to the trail head. We also met her 27 year old son who was going out for a run. Everyone is so nice here.
But anyway, yes, I said trail. I know that we said that we weren’t going to hike anymore, but we had decided upon this beach and it would be done. The trail was a series of about a million switch backs up the side of an extremely steep hill. I think people walk them regularly because there are houses all up and down along the switch backs! They park their car at the bottom and walk up. Crazy. The view at the summit was amazing. It was at this point that we had the choice of walking the easy way down the road, or taking the longer, but much more scenic route along the cliff sides. What did we choose? Longer, more difficult cliff walk!
Sumner from the cliff walk
The cliff walk was great, it followed literally along the side of the cliffs which meant a million more switch backs. Unlike the states that are super concerned with safety, there were hardly and rails and nothing was stopping us from walking out to the edge. Only a sign with a man falling warned us of the dangers. It was so neat to see the birds that nest in the cliffs and the water crashing up against the grey stone cliffs. Even all stirred up, the water is such a deep turquoise. And dare I say, more beautiful than the Caribbean?
Finally after about 1 ½ of hiking and walking we got to the beach. But we were literally 20 feet off the trail when we ran into a group of guys we knew (including my flat mate Cameron). We asked how the beach was, and they said they didn’t know. They were wet, and we asked if they hadn’t been swimming why were they wet. They said they were cliff jumping. One of the guys pulled out a camera and showed us some pictures and videos of them jumping off a huge cliff. My other two guy flat mates who were with us were all for jumping. So we all shrugged our shoulders and set off back up the trail. So much for the beach I thought.
Taylors Mistake from above in a sheep pasture
At the top of the trail from the summit, we cut through a field down a smaller cliff that jutted out into the ocean. It was actually one of the cliffs that made the entrance to Taylors Mistake bay. And there it was, the cliff. It was about 40 feet up and intimidating as all get out. We climbed (yes, climbed) down to the base of the cliff. The guys all stripped down and climbed back up for us girls to watch. And there they went, one by one right off the edge.
The cliff in the middle is where we jumped
Then they all crawled out of the ocean and asked who was next. All that were left were us four girls. We looked at each other, when in Rome... So up we climbed, all scared and wondering what possessed us. Stephen (from Cananda) Damon and Gaines came up for support. Gaines jumped for a second time like it was nothing. Then Emily just took off and jumped! Stephan looked at me and was said “Well, your next in line Liz, ready?” I looked back at me to Juli, then walked up. It looked a lot higher at the edge, a whole lot higher. And it was scarier than you thought because it was not a flat edge, but rather angled sharply down and the rocks were sharp. It was hard to get a good footing. I made it with my toes at the edge and just stared having flashbacks of the high dive when I was little. My knees were shaking and I just couldn’t do it. So Juli went up next. Same thing. Then Nicole, who was afraid of heights walked up. It took her a few moments, but she jumped! But you could tell it hurt. Turns out that she tucked her right foot behind her left knee and when she hit the water, pain. There is the most epic bruise ever on her thigh still tonight. It looks awful.
Stephan then jumped to make Juli feel better, but she still couldn’t bring herself to do it. I had somehow gotten my nerve up a second time and walked up the to the edge. It wasn’t as bad this time, but I was still scared. I looked down at everyone watching, I asked them how they jumped. Gains said he sang the song “I believe I can fly”, very funny Gaines... And that started everyone yelling things to think about. Then I took a deep breath, got ready, and counted 3...2...1... But I couldn’t do it. I was getting ready to turn back when I just stepped off.
And I fell.
It’s funny, it looks like such a short period of time, but it lasts forever. It’s an odd feeling free falling. I can’t explain it, but as I write it and close my eyes I can remember what it feels like. Then as you start to enjoy the feeling, you remember that water should be coming soon, and as you start to panic slightly... BAM it’s there.
The jump
I was the lucky one of the bunch. I had a great starting stance so I could just bunny hop off. Immediately I pointed my toes and stuck my arms to my side. The guys said I had the best form. Thank God too, because people had some pretty awful bruises and strained tailbones from hitting the water wrong. But I was square, no problem.
It was amazing though, such a feeling when you look back up above you and see so far up where you came. The water was so cool, and the waves swelling was so nice.
Getting out though was tough, you had to time the swells just right to grab onto a rock covered in barnacles and mussels. I wrecked my arms crawling out. Blood and scratches that are still on my arms. It looks like I fought a cactus or something. But overall, totally worth it.
Oh, and we made it to the beach for about an hour before we headed back. We took the road this time which meant climbing over 200 stairs. Ugg. Calves of steel anyone?
First Week
My classes are pretty simple thus far. I have Introduction to Maori Society, Conversational Maori for Absolute Beginners, History of New Zealand 1350-1940 and Marine Biology. I think that it'll be a good semester.
My classes aren't as large as I expected from a Uni with 20,000 students. But most New Zealanders I have come across say that this Uni is one of the smaller ones. My largest class is Introduction to Maori society with about 150ish people while my other classes have under 60. We also have these things called tutorials. Its like having class a second time with a TA and fewer people. I haven't had one of those yet, but we'll see how it goes.
