Day Twelve: Christchurch, New Zealand

Dear All,

Greetings from Christchurch! It was another day of perfect weather here—around 66 degrees and sunny. The tour we were on today was called the “High Country Explorer.” The first part was a bus ride through Christchurch to get to the Southern Alps (that’s what they call them) with the bus driver, Kris, providing commentary. You probably remember that Christchurch had two fairly large earthquakes, the first in 2010 and the second in 2011. I looked it up when I got back to the ship, and earthquakes are a fairly common occurrence here. In fact, in the last five years, they have had thousands of them from magnitudes of 1.1 to 6.2. Seems a bit iffy.

The second part was a fairly tame 4X4 vehicle drive through the mountains. Lovely scenery.

Finally, we boarded a super-fast jet boat (I read that part in the literature a bit too late), driven by a crazed New Zealand maniac. We commenced speeding up the Waimakariri River, often careening dangerously close to the steep-walled gorge or alternately, perilously close to the gravel bars in the middle or on the sides of the river. These boats need about four feet of water to get going, but then at full speed can skim across water that is only about four inches deep. Since it’s so shallow, it often seemed as if we were going to run up on a gravel bank and be flipped out of the boat. And just to make it more exciting, our crazed boat driver did a number of 360 degree turns that would almost knock us out of the boat, with an aftershock of having 45 degree water splashed all over us. Sometimes it’s hard to draw the line between what’s fun and what’s just plain terrifying. This was one of those times.

Who Knew? Kind of Fun Fact for the Day:

The Waimakariri is a braided river. A braided river or braided channel, consists of a network of river channels, separated by small, often temporary islands, called braid bars. Our tour guide said that braided rivers are only in New Zealand, Alaska and Nepal.

What the heck? No wonder I thought we were in imminent danger! If I had known what a braided river really was, I wouldn’t have set foot in that super-fast jet boat.