The Banks Peninsula

Yesterday, I went to the Banks Peninsula. Nine million years ago the land comprising the peninsula were two volcanoes. Eventually the two volcanoes joined with the mainland.

Therefore, in greater Canterbury, you can drive from Christchurch to Akaroa--or completely around the peninsula surrounding the city of Akaroa, in a camper van, with two young men whom you might've met about 1000 miles away in Fiji last week.

Before the boys arrived, I biked to downtown Christchurch. Some of the old buildings have been converted to artists' studios and galleries. In one of the courtyards is this sculpture, for lack of a better word, called "Echo." I didn't just draw on the picture with Microsoft Paintbrush (especially since I'm consigned to use a Mac here); this is a real thing that's hung in the air with clothesline-type things, and that's my best description of it.

I returned to the Canterbury Museum to learn more about the Maori and the moa. I was especially surprised and somewhat saddened that the Maori used to wear cloaks not just made of pigeon feathers but also of dog.

Then I went to the art museum, which featured an absolutely interesting exhibit of Ans Westra photography. She published a children's book in the '60s called Washing at the Pa, which was about Maori day-to-day life, all told with black-and-white photographic images. The lovely book was banned at the time by their version of a Board of Education. Controversy ensued, because it was around then that New Zealanders were coming to terms with their colonial past and their treatment of the indigenous Maoris.

I left the gallery around 5 in the evening.


I, then, biked home. Ola and Fil, my Swedish friends whom I met in Fiji, drove their camper van to Christchurch to pick me up. We'll travel for a few days while Michele is finishing up her freelance work, and I'll help them with petrol costs. Thankful that they had a place to sleep for the night and even shower, they made us a taco dinner. I like being cooked for.


The next morning we left for the Banks Peninsula, a day trip in the camper van. I told them that if I was going to share the van with them that they would have to wash their dishes first. :)


Here is one of the bays within the peninsula. This one has a landmass looking a bit like an exclamation point.


As the sun started to lower in the sky, the sea turned from blue to silver, like liquid mercury. Fil said it looked like cement, but he pronounced it "semen." For the longest time I looked out at the water wondering why it looked like semen. I thought that I must really have led a sheltered life until Ola finally caught the pronunciation mistake. Suffice to say, we were all embarrassed.


And here's where everything becomes lowbrow. We stopped for coffee (and ended up with Devonshire tea and scones with strawberry jam and cream for some reason--an honest mistake?). This sign was in the restroom.


After having a proper tea, we visited the museum at Okains Bay. Better than the museum in Christchurch, this one explained quite a bit about the Maori. Here is a statue as one of the exterior decorations to a meeting house. If you click on it to enlarge the photo, you'll see that there are faces in strange places...


Fil and Ola and I drove around and down to the exclamation point and walked up it and ate Cadbury chocolate. Here's a view of the exclamation mark longways.


At the end of the day, we stopped at Birdlings Flat to look at the sunset and collect smooth rocks.