Leaving Christchurch + Kaikoura trip

After more than 1 month in sad city of Christchurch, time has come to move and possibly try to have some fun after lot of working ;) Our destination after CHCH was the mecca of adrenaline sports and one of the most visited towns in NZ - Queenstown. Queenstown is really amazing place, but let me elaborate this in the next post. In this one I will get back to the last days in Christchurch.. As I wrote couple of times already, CHCH is really dead city and there is not much to do these days, but I must say that at the end I really enjoyed the time spent there and I will have a beautiful memories mainly thanks to the wonderful people I met there... 

On the day we were leaving CHCH we went to see the rugby superleague match. The local Crusaders (with couple of all blacks players in the team) destroyed the aussie team Brumbies. In NZ i became a big fan of rugby as I only realized here how tough, difficult and exhausting this sport is.  

GO CRUSADERS!

International dinner in Christchurch - Czech goulash and beer, french pancakes or argentinian and finnish desserts in NZ - yummy. 

I tried to make halusky (the version with sour kraut as getting bryndza in NZ would be a tough challenge ;)) for the first time in my life and at the end it pretty much worked out, but it was a big pain in the ass (as you can see on my face expression) and next time I will think twice before I commit to do them again :)

During one weekend we made a trip to wonderful Kaikoura with couple of friends. Kaikoura is coastal area with big mountains almost right on the coast (going surfing with look on the peaks covered with snow was totally amazing). Kaikoura is famous for dolphin and whale spotting as the ocean is really deep (I think around 2kms) just few hundred meters away from the coast. On the picture is sunrise from the campspot we stayed at (the ocean view)

And here the sunrise with view on the mountains.

Kaikoura is flooded with seals. They are literally everywhere. There was even one massive  lazy seal lying in the middle of busy walkway not caring too much about the tons of people passing him by.

Mornings can't get much better than this, can they?

On the way from CHCH to Queenstown we stopped on Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki (although I have been here already during the Easter, but the boys and Miska have not) and although we havent been lucky to get the view with the Mt Cook, there were still some spectacular scenes to watch...

View from the church on Lake Tekapo

We've spent one night right on the base of Mt Cook hoping the weather will be good enough the next day for some small hike, but we woke up to a heavy consistent rain, so Mt Cook remains unseen for me... This sunset picture was made on the way to Mt Cook village around Lake Pukaki.

So, now we are here in Queenstown, with the best burger in NZ - Fergburger (possibly the best burger in my life. ahh) and a lot of "old" friends from Mt Maunganui. The weather was pretty shit the 3 days we spent here, but QT is fun and beautiful anyways. I only stay here until Sunday now, as I got the job in skiresort I was applying for, and they want me to work on preparations before it gets too much snow, but I will definitely come back to QT before my winter season job starts... More about QT in the next post. seeya ;)