Pillars of the Kings and the Return of the TeamGeek

what you are seeing is the river Anduin. Here, Aragorn and the Fellowship passed the Pillars of Kings. I don't actually know what the name of the river is off hand, bus this was one of the locations we are sure was in Lord of the Rings(scene where they are in boats going down the river and there are 2 large statues on the sides of the valley). It was pretty cool...we also went up to the winery that sits on this, or this sits on, and picked up some wine.

I'm posting from the Starbucks in Christchurch. They had Internet access and are near to our motel tonight, which is important as we have bid our rental car adieu, after some brief heart palipitations. I called to verify the location of drop off and the first guy, who sounded like he was probably in Bombay but would have claimed to be in Orlando, Florida, said, "You are supposed to return it to Wellington." For those not keeping track, Wellington would be on the north island, and the car was not getting returned there unless it could float.

So we did get that straightned, and we had a nice bit of luck, the hotel we are at was booked so full we got a magic upgrade to a bigger suite room. I'm sure the room we would have got would have been great anyway. This is my official plug for South Pacific Tours, they did a great job, Sandi(our agent) was really good to work with and really helpful when Chicago/weather/United screwed the pooch and we missed our original flight. I highly recommend them. I'd also like to say the tourist industry is actually really nice here, not out of control, and not too gouging. That could just be the general nice setup of most things here. Although I still get quesiton marks with everything closing at 4...

Which leads to...Christchurch, where everything does not actually close at 4! It's actually a bit odd to see so much open! Also they have real 4 lane roads here, real traffic, and not quite congestion, but some messy streetage. So driving here is interesting. Jester and me agree, we're both conerned about re-adapting to driving at home, since we're both pretty comfortable on the wrong side of the road now. Although there was a PL5(that's Pucker Level) moment today when a car in the oncoming traffic direction decided to make a quick pass in a short gap...I believe my response was, "OOOOOooooooo".

Tonight should be a fun filled romp of repacking and DVD burning so that I have a copy of the pictures too, and prep for tomorrow. I think we've settled on taking a taxi to the airport but we are worried we have enough funds between the 2 of us to afford it. We'd rather not withdraw more funds if we can avoid it. We're trying to spend all the NZ$ in NZ. Christchurch is nice though, seems like a nice city otherwise. I can't say that anything stands out per se, as we won't have much time to look around. They have a lot of greenspace, but they are enough of a big city that we can't see the ocean or mountains which are both near the city.

The last thing to do is arrive at the airport tomorrow early, probably around 1PM, we're trying to get our hop flights to Auckland sync'd, as right now my flight is 1 hour later then Jesters. If not, not big deal, we'll manage. I think with that, this will very likely be my last entry from New Zealand, it's been great, I highly recommend it. I might post one more entry from the States, advice for travelling to NZ and any loose ends(like the location of the website for pictures and the web based scrap book I'm going to make). Farewell NZ!
The Cleric