New Zealand Day One

We made it to New Zealand! The 13 hour plane ride wasn't too bad considering we took it through the night and slept some of the time. Also each seat had a TV screen with on demand everything. Pretty cool. We landed in Aukland and connected to another flight which took us to Christchurch. Jet lag wasn't too bad and after a little nap, we were ready to get out and see some sights. We took a nice walk to the center of town. They have a big park in the middle which is adjacent to the old university. It is now an art center and museum.

On our walk to the park, Dave caught some cicadas. They were so noisy! On the picture you can see the leftever skeletons from the larvae on the tree. Dave put two cicadas by my ears. I felt like I was being downloaded. It sounded like the noise from an old style dial-up modem, but about ten times louder.

This is the rose garden in the botannical gardens at Hagley park. The weather here is amazing. It is summer here. Yesterday it was about 80, today they are forcasting around 65.

Some more of the beautiful flowers at the botanical gardens. These are dahlias bordering the rose garden. There must have been 100 different kinds of them. The old university of Canterbury in the heart of Christchurch.

Today we have plans to head down back to the downtown area. We only browsed yesterday. We hope to be able to see some more today. Yesterday was New Zealand's independence day called Wantangi (something like that) and most of the museums were closed.