Thursday , March 3 till Sunday March 6 – Driving, Dolphins, Chabad and Christchurch

We arrived in Christchurch on the night of Thursday, March 3, after a very nice drive via the West Coast of South Island, New Zealand. Along the way, we stopped in a place called Hokitika, which is known for pounamou, - literally ‘greenstone’ or Jade. They do much handwork with Jade jewelry and the like, as well as glassblowing. I bought some glass penguins here, which were pretty nice and cool looking! We then began to climb through the main mountain chain that runs down the spine of South Island, which accounts for the very different weather that South Island has vs. North Island – the mountains really make for interesting weather on South Island. One side has a good deal of rain, and the other eastern side has much less, as an example. The main road from West to East runs through a very scenic area called Arthur’s Pass. We stopped at Arthur’s Pass for a bit and saw some waterfalls, as well as had an encounter with a Kea. A Kea is a bird that is as common as pigeons in some parts of New Zealand – annoying as pigeons also. This Kea (pictured below), would walk up to folks and peck you if you weren’t careful. In fact, it sat on top of our car and was pecking away at the roof for a few minutes!

Anyways, as I mentioned we arrived into Christchurch on Thursday night. Bright and early the next day we drove to a place nearby called Akaroa, in an area known as the Bank’s Peninsula. It’s very pretty and full of winding roads and the like. We saw a beautiful sunrise, as you can see from the shot below. In fact, that shot could almost be in black and white – it doesn’t need color!

Why were we going to Akaroa, you ask? Besides the chance to see a French village (more on that later), it’s a very nice place to visit. But most people come for the dolphins. Akaroa and other spots in New Zealand offer something which is not available in many places worldwide – to swim with dolphins in their native habitat. The dolphins in Akaroa are called Hector’s Dolphins. They are about 4 to 6 ft long and swim very fast. They also seem to like murky water for some reason, which can make it hard to spot them. Basically, the company we used takes you out into the bay area around Akaroa to find the dolphins, which everyday seem to be in different spots. They then release you into the water with a wet suit (the water is in the high 50s), goggles and a snorkel, and you can swim right in the area where the dolphins are. They tell you to make noises like singing and to keep moving and you might attract the dolphins. They must choose to come to you, and they are not allowed to feed them in any way to attract them to you. Some people seemed to have a knack for this and they had dolphins swimming right next to them, quite fast at times. Since the water is murky and there was a lot of chop, I quickly concluded I would be better off trying to spot them from the boat. That’s how I got the shots below – it’s very hard to photograph them, because they move so fast, maybe 15 to 20 mph and appear with little warning, so you just have to get lucky!

In any case, they are very special creatures and you really do sense their intelligence. They would come in pods of 2- 4 at a time, and were very playful, sometimes circling someone and then swimming by very quickly a second and third time within minutes in the same area, though always from a different direction it seemed!

We then returned to Christchurch and walked around the downtown area where I got the shots you see below. Christchurch is the largest city by far in South Island and its very nice and well laid out and laid back. You can tell the pace of life is a bit slower here, but that’s part of the appeal. We also visited a very nice museum, the Canterbury Museum, which had local exhibits, and one of my favorites, a whole floor on expeditions to Antarctica. Christchurch is the jumping off point for people and supplies going to Antarctica (it’s on 2000 miles or so south in fact!). This was very cool, as they had a good deal of original artifacts from the famous expeditions in the early 1900s like Shackelton, Amundsen and Scott. It was like going to the moon in those days, with gear much less developed than what we had for the trip to the moon – very dangerous and stupid in some ways for them to try at that point, which resulted in some deaths along the way…

For Shabbat we had our own food, but we went to the shul in town which has been there for about 100 years, on Shabbat morning. I have a shot below in fact. It’s a very pretty shul, but the membership is not very large these days. They did not have a minyan, which was not so surprising it turns out – in fact, they and chabad seem to compete for a minyan. Chabad just recently opened up here in fact. What was amazing though was that they had some type of ‘abridged version’ of the Shabbat service, so you were done in less than 1 hr – they would sing the beginning of some sections and then skip parts – since we didn’t have a minyan they didn’t have to lain which also saved time. We ended up going afterwards to Chabad, in the heart of town, where they did have a minyan, made up mostly of Israeli backpackers. Very interesting mix of folks, from religious Jews traveling after the army to secular Israelis who months before had been into drugs and other deleterious behavior. I have to give chabad credit for locating themselves in places with very few Jews but many of these Israeli backpackers who seem to be seeking there place in life. We will see much more of that when I get to Thailand in April, so stay tuned!

We also went on a very nice walking tour of Christchurch with one of the midwives we met up with on Shabbat, who had grown up in Christchurch. They also had a nice Chinese New Year celebration in a nearby park that we walked too. All in all, a nice Shabbat in a nice place. On Sunday, Lisa left us after having braved 5 weeks with us, to fly back to the US, and Elliot and I took Flight number 11 (flight 10 was from Christchurch to Queenstown, which I neglected to label in the ‘Day from Hell’ entry below) to Auckland, where we would begin our North Island of New Zealand adventure….