Colleen and I left chilly Melbourne for chillier Christchurch today. The flight was at a good time, not at the crack of dawn, we left at 7:00 am from the motel and the flight left at 9:30 am. We didn't know that the time changed by 2 hours so now we are 16 hours ahead of Ottawa.
From what we have seen of NZ so far, it is a gardening city like Hobart with many homes growning roses and lots of them. It is very pretty here right now. We arrived in town after 5:00 pm so while it was not a long day, it was. The only birds we have seen so far are House Sparrows and we have been looking but have been too busy dealing with logistics to do any birding.
We went to a phone store and bought a NZ Sim Card and charged up the phone and called our Birdingpal Nick for our birding day tomorrow. We visited the Mall here but itwas closed (supposed to be open until 8:30 pm but NOT)
We did find a store and bought the essentials, New Zealand wine, lamb steaks for supper (it was delicious), fresh NZ cheese and vegetables and our breakfast fixings for the week while we are here, so we have taken care of logistics, but we may have to get out and buy some more great NZ wine. Supper was excellent. What we didn't get was our NZ bird guide as the book store was closed by the time we got there. We are out for supper tomorrow night but plan to find out if we can buy fresh catch of the day from the harbour huts like we did in Hobart. We plan to sample some New Zealand oysters to see if they are as delicious as the Bruny Island ones.
So tomorrow we start birding and today was a travel day. Almost all the distances in this trip are large (today was 1,800 km) so it is a lost day when one figures in the two hours in the airport, the air time and then the customs lineups. The New Zealand ones are exceptionall long, first passport control, then we had to go to secondary - we had been to a farm or forest and had to take off our shoes for someone with a Master's degree (we were told) to clean them of forest and farm dirt, then all of our stuff had to go through xray. So the day went and then we lost two hours! Our big question is what latitiude are we on or in and is this the closest we will be to the Antarctic. We will ask Nick about that. So far New Zealand feels great. We can see mountains in the distance and our car rental is a four wheel drive Subaru.
We are looking forward to birding tomorrow morning!
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