Christchurch

Christchurch, the biggest city on the South Island, is often billed as "New Zealand's most English city". I thought it looked much more like Fremont, California, with its suburbs sprawling across flat agricultural land up to bare brown hills in the distance:


Even the vaunted cathedral is less impressive in context, surrounded by the mid-rise office buildings of a faded downtown:


But nothing could be more English than a botanical garden, and I liked the one here much better than Wellington's:


There was English-style punting in the Avon "River" (sorry, but where I come from that's a creek):


And back in the main square, we saw little bungee jumpers in training:


So it was something more than a wasted afternoon, in the end.

We were unable to visit Christchurch's biggest tourist attraction (for me, anyway). The city is home base for many of the scientific expeditions that visit the Antarctic, and out by the airport where the flights south leave is a huge museum and exhibition about Antarctic exploration and science. I would have liked to have seen that, but there wasn't time.

But it did occur to me that, if you've been six months on the ice without seeing the sun, Christchurch must be quite an attractive place.