We arrived pretty early on June 15th, after sleeping in Springfield and spent the day visiting Christchurch a bit. We had previously booked another place to stay at in exchange for work, but we had to arrive around 6:00 p.m. The city is very pretty, with a lot of history about the birth of the region (Canterbury) around 1850 and the Maori people living there prior to the settlement. Many, many churches are visible on every main artery, most of them made of stone, and the most famous is the one in "cathedral square", as seen on the picture. At night, we met Patricia and David White around a nice dinner and started to work for them the next day. I helped him in the garage for about 2 hours, and I had never seen a filled garage liked that before in my life. They had moved back in the house a few weeks before our arrival, so that explains all the boxes and stuff David and I had to sort out or rearrange. We then went on the road to run other errands. Dana was assigned on the computer once again, doing data entry this time. On the other days, she cleaned up the bathroom, hung the clothes outside where it really started to be cold (3-4 oc in the morning, frost a few times), and we both cooked and did some gardening twice. I vaccumed the whole house, cleaned the floor in the kitchen, cleaned the greasey stove and hung some clothes as well.We decided to do a recommended walk one afternoon downtown, and it was pretty nice to stop here and there and read about the history of the buidings or parks. We visited the Canterbury museum for about 2 hours, which was lovely. Lots of information about Maori people and the settling of the first Englishmen in town. Queen Victoria is mentionned a few times for sponsoring some of the operation, which surprised me a bit. She has an important part for Montreal's history as well....
Finally, we climbed the big hill that runs between Christchurch and the harbour (with the van), and took a nicve look at the whole plain where the city sits. A bit hazy, but some good footage nonetheless. We kept some stuff for later, as we will probably go through Christchurch on our way back from the "deep" south. As the second biggest city in New Zealand and its definite english style, Christchurch is a must for anybody visiting the country. Big but not overwhelming, it is hard not to like it and there are plenty of places to go out at night and during the day. Different from Wellington, the bus is also a good way of travelling, unless you want to try the tramway, only there to catch tourists though...
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