Travel experiences: New Zealand – Part 3

My sister Michelle and I booked an impromptu 4 day holiday to Christchurch, New Zealand to see our aunt for her 60th birthday. We booked the flight and little else. Our Aunty Janet lived in Rangiora, north of Christchurch. She would pick us up from the airport and we would stay with her in her 3 bedroom unit. That was all we knew when we took seats 22A and 22B on that Air New Zealand flight from Melbourne.

Michelle’s fiance had decided the night before to take Michelle out to a restaurant in the city, which is a 2 hour drive from where they lived. As her fiance with eager to keep the night going, they squeezed in some roulette time at Crown Casino before Michelle begged him to take her home. She landed on top of her mattress a few minutes passed midnight.

As day hadn’t even broken yet that Thursday morning, Michelle picked me up at 5.45am to catch our 9am flight (as I live 45 minutes from the airport, and she 90 minutes from me). As expected, Michelle decided to catch some ‘z’s’ before we landed in Christchurch. However she still had enough cheekiness to suggest that we should have some sort of adventure while we are in New Zealand – after all, it is the adventure capital of the world! With a few ideas flying around, the possibility of sky-diving excited us both. So sky-diving, here we come!

As we approached Christchurch International Airport (international because only Australia seems to fly there!), we ogled at the beautiful snow cap mountains in the Southern Alps as they glisten in the sun, not thinking that this picturesque landscape may interfere with our one and only plan.

Enter Christchurch Airport. Hugs and kisses all round for Aunty Janet and she bought her adorable 10 year old grand-daughter, Courtnay. Adorable, but naughty, shall we say! We sat down in a cafe and toldAunty Janet about our plans as Courtnay made her way to the games arcade. Janet became practical on us and said, “Okay, we’ll need to hire you a car and we need to book the skydiving. I have to work tomorrow, so that will be the best day for you to do the skydiving.”

We drove 30 minute to Rangiora and wiped the dust off the trusty White Pages to find firstly the sky-diving place and secondly a place to hire a car. It was 4.30pm, places close at 5pm in New Zealand. So we called up the sky-diving place and they said to be there by 10am, but we couldn’t quite understand them with their thick Kiwi accent, except they said something about calling them about 9am when we were on our way.