Day 9: Tuesday, March 5, 2002
Exploring Christchurch

Today is our last full day of the trip. That's kind of sad, but after a month I feel like we had enough time away and I'll be okay with heading home. We spent the day exploring Christchurch in a leisurely way. We started by walking down Victoria Street (from our hotel on Beasly St), which had some nice cafes and shops on it, though some weren't open yet — just after 9am. We stopped in one or two to browse, but mostly just walked by.

Christchurch Art Center

Then we headed toward the Art Center, which houses a bunch of crafts galleries all in one. First Walendo had some breakfast at the outdoor cafe, then we wandered around the rooms. The Art Center is housed in an old building, I think a former university building. Each room has different crafts — one for wood items, one for pottery, a few for wool items, and so on. We saw some of the same items we'd seen in other parts of the country, particularly Hokitika, so they must get their products from artists around the country. If we hadn't been buying so many craft items during the whole trip, I probably would have gone a little crazy there buying up so many beautiful things. But I felt like I'd gotten all that I wanted and we had no more room in the suitcases anyway, so we just browsed and enjoyed. I did see a nice Christchurch handpainted t-shirt and was going to get it for my dad, but then I saw it required being hand washed, and I just couldn't see my dad hand-washing a t-shirt (and didn't want inflict that to my mom). Walendo considered some paintings but nothing really struck him, so we escaped unscathed.

Avon River in Christchurch Botanical Gardens

We continued on to the Botanical Gardens. What a beautiful place. It's a very large area with so many big, old trees plus lovely flower gardens. The Avon River runs through it, and we saw the punting boats come by with couples in them and of course the dapper punters pushing them along. With the zillions of ducks on the grassy banks of the river, it was a very nice scene. We wandered through the rose garden then some indoor areas, one with lush green plants, one with vibrant flowers, and a third with all kinds of ferns. We walked some more and then decided to find a bench in a sunny spot to read. The air was quite cool, so the sun felt good. We sat and read for about an hour and absorbed the atmosphere.

Walendo in flower house in Botanical Gardens

About 12:30 we made our way back and stopped once quickly for me to get a bite to eat and Walendo to check email. Then by 1pm, we were at the central Cathedral, hoping to see the Wizard of Christchurch. We'd heard that he stands up on a ladder and spews off on some subject, and he's been doing it for 30 years or something. The Rough Guide said he's not always there, so we hoped we'd be lucky. When we arrived there was an older man spouting off to a small crowd, so we though that must be him. He was going on slightly unitelligibly about religion and it was hard to understand what his point was, so I was disappointed. I checked out the church and then we sat for a bit while Walendo ate cheap Chinese sold in a stand in the square.

Wizard of Christchurch

After a bit, a red beetle drove into the square and shortly after that, a guy in a wizard outfit walked up with a ladder. Aha, so the other guy had not been the wizard after all. That was a relief. Once set up, the wizard blew a sort of whale horn and then began his speil. It was interesting to listen to him. He had a mainly coherent theory about how men and women had gotten their roles all screwed up, and he went off on school teachers, feminists, liberals, capitalists, Americans, the government, pretty much everyone. I agreed with some, not with other parts, but if you were willing to accept some of his premises, his theories made a certain kind of sense. No one in the crowd said anything back to him, but it was interesting to see the reactions. Some were smiling a lot, some were tight-lipped with disagreement, some just seemed curious. (Oh, and a couple of times a large group of Asian tourists came by and talked loudly so you couldn't hear him, which was annoying.) I found it a bit amusing that he'd railed against shopping as an evil, but in the end, he was selling his upside-down map of the world (showing South as up and showing the earth as a hollow sphere with the land on the inside — which makes heaven in the center and hell outside the circle, which he liked better). He was also selling a book he'd written. Seemed a little odd, after he'd bragged about how he doesn't work and doesn't mooch off the government and doesn't pay taxes. Still, it was something to think about.

Walendo in Sala Thai restaurant

It was close to 3pm by the time he finished. Walendo and I sat a while longer and then walked around the town a bit more. Walendo almost bought a briefcase for the laptop he's going to get (everything is so inexpensive, it's so tempting) but didn't — again we'd have no place to put it in our suitcases. After walking around a while, we stopped again in the central square and read our books for another hour-ish. By then it was about 5:30, so we decided to get an early dinner and then relax in the room, getting ready for home. We ate a small Thai restaurant on Colombo Street called Sala Thai, which was pretty good.

So now we're in the room watching TV and soon it'll be time to see if we can get everything into our suitcases for the long trip home. (We have three planes to take, one of them about a 10 hour flight, so it won't be a fun day.)

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