Today we had about a 6 hour drive to the city of Christchurch. The drive was pretty uneventful, but we did pass by some incredibly blue lakes. Take a look at the pictures. We first saw the color in some man-made ponds on several farms. I figured it was some type of chemical creating the color, but when we saw the huge lakes with the same color I realized that it truly was the natural color.
When we got into Christchurch, we checked in at the YMCA, which was different from the American YMCAs. This YMCA was an accommodation but also had a weight area, climbing wall, and squash courts. It was already pretty late when we got in, so we just had dinner and walked around a bit before going to bed.
In the morning on the following day, we rented some rock climbing shoes at a local outdoor store and then drove 20 minutes out of town to get to a real rock wall to do some climbing. It was a sweet spot. It seemed to be on somebody's farm land, so nobody was there. Apparently one of the Polytech schools (kind of like a trade school) had set up several routes, so Adam just set up the ropes for those lines. We started at the top of the wall and then rappelled down, which was fun. Then we did some climbing. It was a lot of fun. One of the routes was really tough. It took me a while before I could get it. I had to stray from the standard route to get up, which created a large angle between my rope and the belay rope. When I fell off the rock with this angle, I ended up swinging really hard into another part of the rock. Fortunately, I was able to keep control my body during the swing and hit the rock with my feet. A couple other people in my group weren't as fortunate and will probably have some nice bruises. Heh... Here are a few pictures.
After climbing Eli and I played some squash at the YMCA. Neither of us had played squash before, so we really didn't understand the rules. I've seen it on TV before, but I basically just applied racquetball rules while considering the tin to come up with my own rules. It was fun. That ball is really weird, however. And if the YMCA happens to read this, those racquets were asymmetrical before we played with them (or were they?).
Sadly, it was our last night in New Zealand. We had a picnic dinner with Dimitry's kebabs in a garden. Kebabs are my favorite things to eat for lunch. I don't understand why I've never seen kebab stands in the US. It's just chicken (or whatever), lettuce, onions, tomato, hummus, tabbouleh, and sauce inside a Turkish bread wrap. Very tasty. Here is a nice group picture.
Here are a couple random shots of Christchurch. We didn't have a lot of time to explore the city, so I can't really say much about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment