I've been holding off writing anything about this, the first city in New Zealand I've been to for over a week now, really for over two weeks. I would love to say that I've been collecting information, doing wild things and assimilating my notes into a an epic tour de force of such literary brilliance as to set the very sky aflame, but I'd not only be unneccesarily flowery if I did so but also a big fat liar. I have been mostly wasting time, really. By all accounts it happens a lot here.

I have spent time catching up with photo posts and the like, and also I have definitely been taking a break from all that busy shuffling activity and traveling, but I have lived a strange life this past week and all of it thoroughly non-productive. It's easy to do, with the prospect of being in one country for a whole year.
It is also possibly a dangerous mindset, as it isn't exactly getting me up and at 'em every day, rather the opposite.

But what the hell; it is such a nice place to relax in. My first few nights were spent utterly indulgently, languishing in a small upmarket hotel rather than the crowded and impersonal hostel I've been ever since, and the hotel, where I had the luxury of the second smallest yet probably the best hotel room I've enjoyed yet on this trip, was amazing in every respect. The lifts worked quickly and efficiently and even I could not make them break down, despite a continuual and many-faceted campaign.

I have to heartily recommend this place and although it wasn't cheap, comparitively speaking (at NZ$80 a night whereas a hostel bed is $25) this still only works out to £32, a good price for even a manky old English hotel, and for the facilities and fancy touches, a small gym and 24hr sauna (24hr sauna! Why the hell I didn't use I can't imagine!) most especially in the room itself, Hotel SO deserves a highly honourable mention.

They seemed to have consulted the best people when it came to lighting, and far be it from me to pretend to know about interior design but it was sheer brilliance largely because it was anything but that tired old system of internal illumination, if you follow me, and made more difference than I would have thought possible.
There is only one light you ever directly see and that is hidden from you and has no switch, whereas the main illumination for the place is a series of maybe 30 small white-light bulbs all hidden behind a shoulder-high rail that encircles the walls, so all practical light shone from the edges of the room straight up to the ceiling turning the walls themselves into the light source. Very swish and fancy and the foundation of a delightful ambience. It may get a bit flowery just here, I admit.

The little en suite was in the shape of a quarter-section of a circle in one corner of the room, and all in frosted glass with a likewise section-shaped sliding door to match, so the mood light just inside the outer wall diffused through the frosting and gently lit the entire room. A dial next to the bed chose which of 6 colours or none at all you could have, as were all controls accessible both by the bed and by the door, making the little space customisable for whether you want to relax, feel a little bit proactive and awake, or of course if you have opportunity to while away your nocturnal hours with agreeable company ;)

Second best was the blue light that stayed on all the time underneath the bed - you could switch it off, of course, but there was no reason to as you can't see it in bed so it doesn't disturb you. The genius of it being positioned as such being as soon as you get out of bed and your point of view crosses the perimeter of the mattress, say in the middle of the night to use the en suite/go get more beer from the 24-hour boozery/, you can see the floor and enough to do what ya gotta do and go back to sleep without ever seeing white or yellow light, and virtually without being woken up at all. The blue gives you the right type of light to see enough and not be overstimulated.

Best of all was the alarm system, set by the control panel next to the bed, you just hit the buttons and pass out.
Come morning-time, when activated the system begins with an overhead `sun light` that fades in from nothing, and brightens over the course of 15 minutes to about half-intensity, whereupon the television silently switches on to the `wake` channel and a time-lapse view of verdant wild fields and heather-strewn moors, backed by snow-capped mountains with springy white clouds forming and drifting across the landscape casting their shadow up and down the folds and foothills. The sound fades in from nothing to a gentle calming ambient track, and after another quarter of an hour the sun light is on full whack and the television switches to the rolling semi-tropical surf of a North Island beach or a rainforest canopy swaying and whistling (although that's probably the birds not the trees) both to more upbeat ambient music, leaving you gradually awakened as if by sunlight to see a beautiful natural scene to a calming and uplifting score. Best alarm clock ever.

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After that a hostel, no matter how wonderful, just ain't gonna be the same, although this one tries very hard. Like almost everything else in New Zealand so far the hostel, and especially the staff (like nearly all the people everywhere) are made from a near perfect mold.
Really, these guys are great, and in a way it's a pity there are so many travelers here because they are a depressing bunch by comparison! And it's not often you'll hear that about a youth hostel.

I have managed to spend two weeks and two days here in the city, and seen and done very little. This okay by me, because I've met some nice agreeable people and done a couple of cool things, but strangely for a city of such eminence in this country, there is amazingly little to see and do, within the city at least.
Most to blame for this initially was the weather, as the East coast of this island has been battered by a series of storms and the streets, already freshly chilled to about 8 degrees, were lavishly endowed with lashings of rain for the first week, and the wind that came through was fierce and, unless you were wearing plastic underwear, highly personal.

I went nocturnal for nearly a whole week as well, after a Saturday night that went on to become a Sunday afternoon thanks to the company of some determined Germans, Austrians, Irish and Americans and a couple of bars that don't close until the last customer rolls bloated and senseless out the doorway, and after that found myself sleeping until nightfall and hitting the sack only minutes before dawn for a while.
Recovering eventually I booked myself a tour on Lyttelton harbour to go dolphin spotting, and despite the recent disturbances in the weather we all did, indeed, all 60 or so random tourists, get to see a half-dozen or so of the tiny Hector's Dolphin, the smallest species of said mammal in all the world.

Measuring a maximum of only 1.4metres; 4ft 7" in real money; it is indeed a tiny wee thing of a dolphin but wow, can they move! It amazes me still to see just how fast marine animals can swim - I would dearly love to see for myself a marlin or swordfish or, better yet, a sailfish going at full tilt - because the motion required, with fins a-pumping and tails a-swishing and the whole damn body a-oscillating like a dervish, although mostly because I can barely whip up a speed of half-a-knot myself even if you put me in the same tank as a militant Christian armed with fins and a harpoon gun.

They are amazingly playful creatures, and I found out just why they love to accompany boats and follow alongside them; one of the chief playtime hobbies of dolphins is wave surfing, would you believe, where they position themselves in bottom of the wave as it is about to break and get pushed up and along as it crashes along. Of course as a manmade boat goes about its business it is constantly creating a fairly large wave on either side and dolphins just love to cruise along and play in this wake.

Lyttelton harbour is a pretty scenic place overall, and venturing out of it and into the Pacific ocean is exhilarating, especially standing at the bow of the boat on the lowest public deck going at maybe 30 knots into the wind :D Very cool, very cold, and worth the price of the ticket alone.
Included was a ride in the Christchurch Gondola - no, not the type that goes on water.
This was a revelation to me as well, but the word gondola in new zealand is for what we Europeans would actualy call a cablecar, and the Christchurch GondoCable is home to a nice little musuem with silly little history ride (it's for the kiddies, I was the only one on it of course when I went, it being far too childish for todays kiddies *much rolling of eyes*.

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Other than that I have had few adventures, aside from going on one little date with a girl tending bar in one place on a drink-fuelled bender (surprising she was actually as I remember which goes against the stereotype of these hazy encounters, regrettably the drink must have instead fuelled my sense of her sense of humour or some other such thing, and nothing is to come of it) and on that same said night getting into the backrooms and afterhours haunts of various other nightclubs - maybe there's some unspoken idea about giving the English a tour behind the scenes of the nightlife around here.
Some utter pillock Irish bloke materialised at one point on this night and proceeded to try and make me feel bad for conquering the Irish, invading India (with the help of an Indian guy in the pub he introduced us to each other then pointed at me and said to the other guy "He invaded your country, like he invaded mine" to the cringing of the Indian guy and the obvious bewilderment of me.
He couldn't take a joke himself, so if I see him again I'll go the cultural exchange route and just break his knees like an English footie holligan. It might make him feel better in his wild accusations to have something to really complain about :)

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There is a delightful river, some botanical gardens and a series of lovely old buildings, especially the college and the cathedral, and that, mostly, is Christchurch folks. I went to Queenstown yesterday and am off to see Milford Sound in just a few short minutes, and after that it's party time and the odd bit of faux-adventure sporting. I plan to go hangliding or parasailing while I'm here and get a proper taste of it.

You may however keep bungee jumping, thanks all the same.