Spring Break: Christchurch to Nelson

I'm back! Don't worry I didn't forget about the blog. I've been on a two week road trip which was the most exciting break ever! Sure beats working at Market Basket. I've never been on a road trip with friends before so it was a new experience for me and I loved it. I was really cool waking up each day in a new place with new adventures. It really changed my views on a lot of things too but I will get to that in another separate post. For now I'll just tell you all about the adventures. Warning: There are going to be a lot of parts posted over the next week. I was going to do three parts but that just wouldn't do it justice.

Day 1
Restart shopping center: home to the best pizza I've had here.
Leave for the Auckland airport at 3:30am for Christchurch. Let it be known that the All Blacks game was the night before and was a blast. We ended up going into town after and I got back to my flat at 3:15. So no sleep for me. Thankfully I bought a redbull and was actually not tired at all until like 9pm. We landed and picked up the car then went to the Antarctic Center near the airport. That was the only let down during the two weeks. It was over priced and there were not as many penguins as we were hoping for. Then we made our way to downtown Christchurch. For those who don't know the city was hit by a bad earthquake last year. This destroyed most of the downtown area. We went to the botanical gardens which was really cool. Then we went to the Restart mall which is made of shipping containers. It was cool to see how they dealt with the earthquake and I think that was a really good way to get things open again. We made our way to the beach after that since it was so nice out. It started getting dark so we made our way to the hostel, watched some tv and called it a day.

Day 2
This was a big travel day. We had to drive from Christchurch to up to Marlborough. It would have been a five hour drive but we made lots of stops and detours. The first was to Hamner Springs which is full of hot tubs and waterslides. It was a blast going from the hot water to the cooler water on the slides. After a few hours there we continued on to Kaikoura. There were some great views on the drive there. Actually, just assume that all drives had great views unless otherwise stated.  It is a little beach town with some nice shops. We asked one worker what they would do if they only had a few hours here and he told us to go to this waterfall and see the seals. We were hoping to see some seals so we continued on to the waterfalls. BEST PITSTOP EVER. I thought the Hamner Springs stop would be the best but nope it got knocked out less than four hours later. There were seal pups everywhere. It was awesome! There was one a little further down than the rest so we went to say hi to it. He/she came right up to us and we could have touched it if we wanted to. We played with it using a stick and leaf. The seal would swim and get the leaf. I can't say enough times how awesome this was. Then we continued driving up to Marlborough. We went on a short hike in the dark to see some glow worms when we got there. I couldn't get a good picture but they looked like little weak LED's.
It's kind of hard to see in the photos but there are at least 20 seals in that pool.


Day 3
Rainforest!
This morning we took a three hour hike around one of the Marlborough Sounds. The views were great and the water looked so green in some places. When we got back to the hostel we changed and got ready for the winery tour/tasting at Cloudy Bay. The tour was the quickest tour ever and was really underwhelming but the tasting made up for it. The lady lived in Vermont at one point and was really friendly. She let us try more than we were supposed to and was really helpful when it came time to buy some wine. Then we went to this little store that reminded me of some store in Burlington. It had all kinds of free samples of breads, liquor, sauces and honey. We spent about a forty minutes just trying everything. Next we went to another winery for another tasting. This one wasn't as fancy but was still good. Then we stopped in Picton for some food and made the three hour drive to Nelson.
So thats it for now but look for an update or two tomorrow.

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