America, meet the jumping pillow. It's a giant air-filled...thing...that you jump on. Like a pillow. But big. They are common at holiday parks and campgrounds. And if you place a heavy person at one end (like Ephraim) and tell him to bounce, everyone at the other end goes flying in the air and laughs like crazy. You should really try this, America. You'd like it.
This day (Dec 21st) we were in Kaikoura, a nice little coast town with a peninsula that had lots of fur seals.
We walked along the black sand beach and saw some penguins! But they flew. So they weren't really penguins. Just some other black and white sea fowl.
We loved this view of the beach and a snow capped mountain in the background.
This episode cracked me up. We were driving past "Fifeshire" (down the road from Bag End.) (Not really.) Suddenly we're surrounded by stampeding sheep racing past us. Ephraim slows and as he pulls over we hear a THUMP against the car. "I think the sheepdog just broadsided us," he says. But the dog was unaffected and loped along behind the herd. Farmer Bilbo brought up the rear on his 4-wheeler and followed the herd as they turned off the road. I didn't realize people still herded sheep and stuff. OK, I know it happens, but I loved seeing it.
We drove down Hwy 1 and took one detour to see a "surf spot" at Gore Bay and a cool site called Cathedral Rocks.
Christchurch was a biggish, modern city with great English flavour.
Our friend in Wellington had helped us find a great hotel deal online, so we stayed at the Copthorne Commodore for $90/night for 2 nights. It took awhile to find—we had to consult the "i-site". Every city has a visitors center called an i-site, which is basically like your own free travel agency. It's a fabulous resource.
We finally checked in to the hotel and went to the pool! The kids loved our “new home”.
For dinner we went out for Thai, because we could! (No Thai restaurants in AS.)
Have I mentioned that it got dark around 9:30? So it was a real challenge convincing the kids to sleep at bedtime. We were getting more and more exhausted. But what's a holiday without a messed up sleep schedule?
1 comment:
Wow, I'm amazed at how much you guys did and saw! How many days? And you saw 9 different places (so far)! How's that giant pillow? Kids don't just go flying off onto the ground? Looks fun, though, nice and soft, not like a trampoline. More like a jumping castle?
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