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Saturday 10.19

This is a day of rest. Maybe you have read Gammy Musings #3, if you haven’t I suggest you do. So this is a story about Dotty and Liz. Jim promises he will write a brief about his day…. I will probably not be brief 🤦🏻‍♀️

Dotty and I were to be picked up by the Akaroa French Connection at the hotel. Which I thought was really nice of them, We are waiting and waiting. We see a Sprinter type van, with a luggage trailer. He pulled in to park and as Jim was outside, asked if Jim were going to Akaroa. We were still waiting inside the hotel lobby area. So we introduce ourselves to Mark, Dotty picks the front seat (don’t worry it is not the front passenger seat only the first row of seats behind the driver). This is very fortuitous because apparently his microphone does not work and well we are the only ones that can hear him. And the passenger behind me is happy because he takes this trip 2 times a month or so.

One of the groups that got on the bus was a collective of international female students and their chaperone. The international students get a free bus trip and a free activity, not sure if that is a day, or each day on the weekend, or just once a week. The girls were all from the states. Their chaperone was from New Zealand and was a former rugby player. He was able to give us some of the commentary Mark didn’t provide.

Like this little tidbit: Did you know there is a group of hostels you can stay that are actually prisons. I didn’t get a picture of it, but you can check out the Addington Jail House. He, the chaperone, had stayed here and said it was fine, until the doors were closed at night, and then you knew you were in a jail.

It is road construction season all over NZ. Much more so since they have had some earthquakes, mudslides, etc. Even with the earthquakes being many years ago. So we are driving toward Akaroa, leaving Christchurch and winding through all the orange cones. Mark told a story about one time after the earthquake and all the cones were put around and about the city, this entrepreneur had had enough of the orange cones so at night he would go around town and pick up the cones. Then this man noticed the city was running out of cones, so he approached the council and sold the cones back to the city.

We passed two lakes on our way to Akaroa. One was Lake Ellesmere (Te Waihora). This lake is the shallowest lake, only 2 meters deep. The rugby player chaperone told a story of an eel that swims from really far away( like 10,000 km) to come back every year to this lake to breed. I did find that there are eels in the lake and some do migrate for breeding purposes.

We stopped briefly for the restroom in Little River at the museum. Another quirky feature of Little River are there accommodations. You can stay in Little River in a silo! I apologize for not getting pictures.

The chaperone asked Mark if he were going to stop at the top of the hill for about 5 minutes. The chaperone, not sure why I didn’t get his name-apparently I was not channeling my inner Mommy. So stop we did for this view. I didn’t get to hear the whole story, but it goes something like this… One Māori tribe, had a beautiful daughter and the chief of the Māori tribe wanted to marry her. Apparently the second chief was not as pleasant or nice, so the dad didn’t want to let his daughter marry the man… and this is where I get confused, because one of them lived on the top of the mountain, and as you can see in high tide you cant get to the top.. we are talking about the islands in the stream. So anyway, one of the chiefs worked with English. The English commander was actually tried and convicted and lost his commission for helping the one chief. I did find a story online though it is not the legend of the 2 chiefs.

Then after some real twisty, turny, glad I didn’t have anything in my stomach, but really wished I had an oh shit bar to grab hold of, we drove into Akaroa.

Akaroa is known for it’s Hector’s dolphin cruises with dolphin sniffing dogs. We opted to walk. The ladies sea kayaking said they saw dolphins, penguins, and lots of sea birds. And walk we did, from one end of town to the other, up a hill and back down and back to the middle of town.

Mark let us off at the wharf, well we could have gotten off in the center of town, but it was a beautiful day and we wanted to walk. So we walked and shopped until we got to the farmer’s market, but there wasn’t much farm in the market, only a lot of bread and cake products which could be had gluten or gluten free. The farmers market was in the front yard of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. Well what should we see, but, our good friend Bishop Pompallier. He gave his first sermon at this church.

After the church, Dotty suggested we walk to the Giant’s house. She had seen a sign for it. So we set off. The Giant’s house was on Rue Balguerie. This street goes straight up. To walk it, it is about a km up.. Maybe not, but it seemed like 4 km walking straight up the street. Along the way we took many pictures of flowers. I combined our pictures into a little video… I’m fancy (No music yet.. )

The anglican church was right at the bottom of the Rue Balguerie, so we popped in. Dotty remembered to get Flat Jesus out.

So we finally made it to the driveway of the Giant’s House. Guess what… ??? The driveway went straight up. Think “there is no way I would plow or snowblow this driveway.

Dotty and I had not researched the Giant’s House before the trip.. In fact I don’t think it had been on the website I had briefly perused. “Why?” do you ask? Well we get up to the top of the driveway and see the price to get in…. $35. Yep, nope, we aren’t doing it.. We did take some pictures around the outside of the house.

Time to head back down the street and over to the lighthouse. The lighthouse was 1.2 km away from where we were. It was getting warmer with the sun and there was no breeze, so we made sure our jackets were off while we trekked back across town. Retracing our steps along the water. The water was so clear. The greens green, the blues blue.

The Akaroa lighthouse was not always where it lives today. At one point it was over on Akaroa head. The NZ government was going to abandon it when it was no longer needed. Push it right off the cliff and into the bay. A man named Jim Sheppard came along and said, NO! He purchased the lighthouse from the government for $1. Not a $1 coin, but a $1 bill which is no longer produced in New Zealand. He hired people to shore up the land and took the lighthouse apart and moved it. The lighthouse is open for tours on Saturdays and Sundays from 1-3. We were in luck and it was only $5 to get in.

We encountered wildlife while leaving the lighthouse: a yellow hammer and a whiteface heron.

Dotty and I were plenty hungry, but it was past lunch time, so we opted for ice cream.

Below are some interesting photos Dotty and I took around town.

Home again, home again… or at least back to the Sudima. But wait! There’s more, we stopped at a cheese store. I was forbidden to buy more cheese, but Dotty wasn’t! I was not forbidden to buy chips! And I found a cheese trail map. Where has this been all my life?

#HowFortunateWeAre #MakeOurOwnSunshine #AdventuresOfALifetime