Last Saturday I headed out of town with some friends for a minibreak on the company dime. For the Christmas function, my company had rented us a dinner cruise (!!!) around Akaroa harbour then put us up for the night in one of several local motels. At first I was a bit leery of the “motel” bit, as I’m used to the North American variety, but it turned out to be a complete and utter score. I shared a two-bedroom suite, complete with a private outdoor seating area and picnic table, with Fiona, one of my coworkers. Considering Ive been staying in hostels everywhere so far in NZ, this was posh as.

Overlooking Akaroa

The drive from Christchurch was about two hours, including rest stops in Little River and at an amazing lookout point just above Akaroa. Not only was I grateful to get out of the car (ugh, motion sickness) the scenery was just amazing. After the flatness of Christchurch it was nice being out among the hills and winding roads (as greebly as they made me feel while driving).

Rolling hills (and sheep!) above Akaroa

I wish I had taken photos of the town itself, as it’s rather quaint (actually, this may be precisely WHY I didnt, as the quaintness is entirely intentional). The town was the only French colony in New Zealand, and has retained a lot of the original architecture and place names (although some newer places are mimicking this look to help keep up appearances).

Black Cat Cruiseship, where we had our Christmas Party

After spending the afternoon chillaxing on a beachfront patio, we head off on a two-hour Blackcat cruise of the harbour followed by dinner while anchored offshore once the sun had set. The harbour, which is actually the caldera of an ancient volcano, was astonishingly pretty with 100m high caves, 270m high cliffs, various seabirds, New Zealand fur seals and even a family of Hector’s dolphins that swam alongside the boat for a while! Little Blue Penguins also live in the area, although I didn’t see any.

Akaroa Harbour

We saw dolphins not too far from here! I didnt manage to take any photos of them though
(I was battling a bit of sea sickness at the time. Again.)

Akaroa harbour at dusk — this was the view we had while eating dinner. My life is so not teh suck!

After the cruise we spent the rest of the evening at various watering holes along the beach, eventually ending up in the bar of one of the hotels crashing some poor guy’s stag party. It was pretty much a sausage-fest of drunkenness, and we only managed to stick around for a drink or two before calling it a night.

Sunday, after an impossibly slow breakfast (don’t get me started), we walked up to the lighthouse for more views of the harbour and village before finally returning back to Christchurch. After this weekend, I went to the chemist to see about getting something stronger for my motion sickness as it’s becoming an issue for me. I’ve been eating ginger pills like tictacs and while they help deal with the nausea, they aren’t preventing a thing. Since I have 6 weeks of New Zealand travel (and NZ is all about the windy roads), followed by 6 weeks in Asia where I’m planning at least four ferry trips, I’m going to need something with more kick. Ive picked up a bottle of Sea Legs and am hoping (and praying!) that they do the trick!

View all photographs from the weekend

ps — The pagination is still not working properly on the site. I’m so sorry about that! It is working if you browse through the archives, it just isn’t accessible from the main page. Hopefully I’ll have this sorted soon! Finally sorted this out! The pagination works properly now, although I’m having a new issue with the most recent entry duplicating itself. It was my attempt to fix this that was causing the pagination errors. Still working on it, but at least now you can navigate through my site!

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