Day 11: Saturday, March 1, Christchurch

Part of the Cook Strait.

Today we went from the North Island to the South Island via ferry from Wellington to Picton. The ferry left at 8am and the weather cooperated with us. After the three hour ferry ride we landed at Picton and got lunch at a local bakery. The bakery had a notice that it was no longer open on Monday since one of its two bakers had left to “further his career” and the other baker couldn’t do it seven days a week. It went on to say that there is a “severe shortage of bakers in NZ.” There were at least four people working the counter at the shop and it made me wonder what the problem is. It seems that anyone who can follow a recipe could be at least an acceptable baker so long as you paid them enough to work early in the mornings. The other possibility is that there is some sort of government certification to be a baker which is actually limiting the number of bakers.

After lunch we drove about six hours to Christchurch. The scenery varied from winding coastal roads to winding inland roads hanging over valleys, but the constant was the serpentine course. It was beautiful, though on the coastal part we had been spoiled by the Great Ocean Road.

Seals have a reputation for being playful, and they lived up to it.

We stopped along the way at a fur seal colony. The coast was lined with big rocks where seals live. This particular colony literally lived on the edge of the road. Most of the adult seals were asleep; they were flopped across rocks in positions that seemed so uncomfortable that your first thought was that the seal must be dead. There was a bowl-shaped rock that was filled by splashing waves and served as a swimming pool. It was filled with young seals that were wrestling and playing.

That night we went hunting for a place to eat in Christchurch and came across The Burrito Company. It looked like a Chipotle rip-off so we ended up eating there. It was excellent (though I might have been influenced by my month of Tex-Mex deprivation) and big. They had a green sauce that was 55% kiwi juice, 14% habanero peppers, and the remainder was the usual spices. It tasted good and had plenty of kick. One of the owners was behind the counter and he confirmed that it was a Chipotle rip-off. He is a Kiwi, but two of his partners are from California. His sister ran track at TCU.