Our first days in Christchurch...

We arrived so jet lagged and exhausted it just wasn't funny but after 24 hours we were more or less alright again. It took a couple of weeks to truly sort ourselves out, but part of that had to be that little earthquakes kept waking us up and it was suddenly Summer here so the sun didn't set until 9:30 or so! One of our first days here we went to the local beach. You can see from the photo here that although it is Summer, it is not especially warm. We had long sleeves on. The locals were in bikinis! Brrr! But man, it's beautiful here.
The kids were so excited to be at a beach and not cooped up in hotels, airports, planes, and our little rental townhouse with no yard and no carpet - just polished concrete floors. (Someone remind me later to tell the story about Maggie breaking her front tooth on that floor.) They played and dug in the sand and tried to get in the water but it was too cold for Erik and I. :)

All these photos and the next ones are from our Facebook pages so if you're on FB, some of these you may have seen before. But I had several encouraging emails from friends and family reading the blog after the last post and I thought I'd get going and just start doing a bit every day instead of all at once - which is the daunting task I can never get through. :) 

Note: I can't figure out what I did wrong to get that text along the side of the photo like that. So frustrating!

Shortly after we arrived, our realtor told us to check out a place called Willow Bank Wildlife Reserve with the kids. I'm so glad we did. We saw some great animals and beautiful scenery. We liked it so much we got a membership and have already been back once. The photos below are from Willow Bank. 

There is boardwalk to keep you on the path and get you over all the water. The green, lush vegetation was quite a change from Arizona. I'm sure I said: "It's so green!" about a thousand times on this trip.

Hmmm... Not sure what a "tame" eel is. Probably more like over-fed. But they did come when you stood at the bottom of the pier. We bought a little plastic container of raw meat - yep raw meat - to feed them. They made short work of it. The kids loved it. I, however, prefer my "tame" eel smoked and wrapped in nori.

Ben fed nearly all his "bird feed" to this hungry deer-thingy while the pigeons went begging. The antlers were fuzzy like they had been flocked!

Once again: It's so green here!

Nope, it's not a kangaroo, it's a wallaby. And they are not supposed to live here. Except some Aussie must have had one tag along because I gather they are here now.
Interesting fact: there are no mammals native to New Zealand. Think about that. Just birds and bugs and amphibians (is a lizard an amphibian?). Anyway, you get the idea. Of course the lovely Brits brought all kinds of mammals here and they got away and ate lots of the local species. Many of which are extinct now.

I had a bad experience with one of these mean buggers on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition once so I don't care for them much. Plus, one of my aunts told me they are bad luck. Caty saw it but it didn't have it's tail feathers up so I told her it only puts them up if it sees a girl-friend or if it thinks you're a bad guy. (I know, over-simplified. I'm not a biologist so I don't talk like one.) Caty's little gears were turning in her head and she ran over and roared at it. She was rewarded with this display. Maggie and Ben were thrilled! Mr Peacock, not so much.

And one last time! It's so GREEN here! 

More soon. Next post will have our trips to Arthur's Pass and Akaroa.