Travel Story «Four become five again»

New Zealand | 0 Comments 18 December 2006 - Last Update 29 January 2007

As Lorna has said, we left Kaikoura after a sampling of Crayfish and pointed our vehicle in the direction of Chirstchurch, (unfortunately it was a car and not a plane as apparently we are not experienced enough quote unquote, to fly a plane into Christchurch airport - even though - HELLO - we had racked up a whole hours worth of flying between us and were headed to the ariport anyway!  Humpf).

A speedy drive (would have been faster if we had flown....) got us to Chirstchurch with time enough to drop our stuff off at the hostel before I left to go to the Airport (BY CAR!!  I´m not bitter at all...) to collect my sister who was flying in for Chirstmas and New Year.  Yea!  As Lorna mentioned already, there was an accomodation chart in place for the holiday period (and no it was not colour co-ordinated...but I would have liked it to be  ) as we were heading into the peak holiday season for New Zealand which meant Hostels were getting fuller and just arriving on the doorstep of the hostel - as we have always done, because, turns out, we are not a very forward planning group - would no longer gurantee us a bed for the night.  So after a brief check, we found out I had booked us all into a Womens Only Hostel for the night.   Whoops.... 

Ah no, I had done this knowingly - this was the only hostel in the WHOLE of (the lonely planet listings of)  Christchurch that had space for 5 women on this night, the night of the 18th of December.  It was this failed attempt to book us in for one night in a YHA/decent Hostel in Christchurch that had given us a scare about accomodation for the rest of our time in New Zealand.  Apparently, even though we are finding it hard to locate them in pubs and restaurants, and we haven´t actually seen any great number of them with our own eyes, there are other travellers in New Zealand at this point in time and they are taking up all the beds!  And so, the Accomodation Chart was born.

So, the Womens Only Hostel - not too bad. Ok, it was a little weird and resonated of commune type living but once you got settled in, it actually had lovely amenities - things like a waffle maker, a clean sandwich toaster (very hard to come by, even in my own house), a bread maker, wine glasses, cappuchino cups, tea cups, coffee mugs (oh yes, these were all different items and not the same one cup).  There was a garden of fresh hebs which you could use at your own descretion (granted we were never going to use the herbs because Take-Aways don´t call for it but they were there and that´s what matters!) and a free laundry service - now this we would use.  As Grainne rightly pointed out, the presence of the fabulous amenities was directly linked to the absence of boys.... She has a point.  Sorry lads.

The owner of the Hostel (one of the only people in New Zealand who could spell Grainne over the phone without you having to go G-R-A-I-N-N-E and then listen to them remark that they had "Never seen or heard of that name" or "That is sooo not how I would have spelled it!" Yes, fantastic, we´ve never heard that before...) greeted us with Dia Dhuit (!) and gave us the standard tour of the place.  I later heard her speaking German to another girl who was staying there so clearly she is a multi-lingual well informed woman who puts me to shame with my shocking lack of foreign language skills...

After horsing the bags out of the car I dashed off the airport, declining the girls offers of company for the ride and sped off.  I could see their very worried faces in the rear view mirror and knew they were thinking She´ll never make it there and back... because, lets face it, I can - and have - get lost in a paper bag.  Somehow, I found the airport (follow the sound of aeroplanes) and collected a very jet lagged sister.  Hello Karen!!

I managed to make it back to the Hostel (Hallelujah!) and dragged Karen around Chirstchurch city in an effort to keep her from sleeping in the afternoon and to avoid the holiday ruining jet lag.  In her semi conscious sleep deprived stuppour, she bought me some new clothes and lunch, (God its great to have a Big Sister!!) and we returned to the hostel to rendezvous with the other girls, all of who had spent some time in city shopping (covert secret santa shopping is hard to do) and moseying around, as you do. 

Karen kept us well entertained with her jet lag which had made her...lets just say slightly on the slow side when it came to holding a conversation and eventually, because the poor girl had been up for 3 days straight travelling over from Switzerland with 2 stopovers, we let her go to bed and ordered a (fabulous!) Indian take away for ourselves and whittled away the rest of the night with a game of cards and some fodder. 

The next day we packed up the now nearly over-flowing car (well what do you expect - it´s 5 girls travelling together, 4 of which are away from their real wardrobes for a YEAR - it´s hard!!) to head towards Arthurs Pass. This is where I leave the story for now to be picked up by another one of the gang.  I bid you Good night. 
Emily