Beginning the Journey to Christchurch

First of all, I have to apologize in advance, because I am working on my blog at an outdoors store in Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island and they are blaring country music. A little distracting! Its particularly funny because you never hear country music here! At least I haven't, anyway. I heard one song, once, at the New World grocery store in Motueka, but that's it! So if you start to detect a little twang in this post, that's why! I left the Innlet to head down to Christchurch to meet up with my friend Anne Skoglund, who I skiied with on the cross country ski team in high school. She has been doing her student teaching here in New Zealand, and returned home to MN yesterday to graduate from U of M - Morris with her degree in secondary school teaching for French. She will be an AWESOME French teacher. Another quick aside: they are not only playing loud country music, they are repeating the same song, and it isn't any better the second time. But I do know that this guy is driving to down Richmond "with a redhead riding shotgun and a pistol by my side." Ahhh. Gotta love country music... So back to my story though. Anne and I had decided to meet up in Christchurch and travel around the South Island together with her week off from classes before she headed back to the US. They're doing better now - they're playing Devil Went Down to Georgia. I like that one. So I figured I'd drive down to Christchurch and meet her at the airport. Easy, right? Well, there was a little more to it than that, as I found. I headed out of the Innlet and over the Takaka Hill (again!). This time, my car had decided that 5 times over that hill was just too much to deal with. I cruised (or limped) into Motueka, at the base of the hill on the far side, with a horrible sound of something stuck in my tire. I couldn't see anything in there though, so I brought it to a service station. Turns out the brake lines had worn out. Thank goodness the brakes still worked! So, while I was waiting for my brake pads and lines to be fixed, I went over to the AA (New Zealand equivalent of AAA) office to get a road map of the Lewis Pass area that I'd be driving through. On my way back to the garage, I finally gave in to my craving for a a chocolate thickshake (we'd call it a milkshake in the US, but they have milkshakes, which are thinner, and thickshakes that are, well, thicker). I went into Arcadia Organics, the local natural food store. I was pretty sure that they wouldn't have them, but at least they might be able to recommend a place that would. I definitely didn't want to go back to the place I'd gone earlier when I'd had a thickshake craving a couple weeks earlier. What I was actually craving that time was my favorite from Dairy Queen, a small mint oreo blizzard. So a peppermint chocolate thickshake should do in a pinch, right? It was horrible. Thin, watery and painfully fake-tasting. So I asked the woman working at Arcadia, hoping that she could recommend a place better than that one. Now here's the surreal part: her answer was "Oh, the McDonalds across the street has excellent thickshakes. Sorry. Kentucky Fried Chicken. I always get those mixed up." The other woman working with her chimed in that the fish shop down the street might have them too, but she didn't know if they'd be open yet and the KFC had really good ones. "Okay, so the KFC across the street is the best place to go for thickshakes?." [I just had to check to make sure that I wasn't dreaming this one - the women at the organic foods shop were really recommending KFC as the best place to get a thickshake in town???]. "Oh yes, I was over there just the other day for a chocolate thickshake. It was excellent." The entire time, I couldn't get over the fact that not only were the women from the organic shop recommending that I go to a fast food place for the best thickshake around, they were raving about the thickshakes that they'd had there themselves, entirely unapologetic and seemingly oblivious to how incongrous their recommendation was to the environment that they were working in. Huh. So I went over there, excited despite my knowledge that I really SHOULDN'T be. Come on, American abroad going to a fast food place from home? How bad is that?! But I have to admit that I have a spot in my heart for those fast food milkshakes. Probably because they're the only thing I'm willing to eat from the fast food places at home, so I've eaten them on many a road trip. So I was somewhat guiltily anticipating a little taste of home. Well, KFC thickshakes are NOT the same as American ones. They fall right in with the poor thickshake standards that I've found to be the general rule here. It was more of an oversweetened chocolatey slushy, all full of ice flakes, not creamy like it is should be. So disappointing! I had another little disappointment after that. I went to pick up my car, took it for a test drive with one of the mechanics to check the brakes and I was on my way, or so I thought. I got about 10 minutes out of Motueka and they started making a funny sound again. So I had to turn back around and bring it back. They took it for a test drive, figured out that one of the parts hadn't been put back in properly, and had to take off the wheel and the brake AGAIN, put this little pin back in place and then put it all back together again. It was quite interesting to watch, but I was glad when they were finished (although a little nervous that maybe there was something else that had been missed, too). It was getting late and I was hoping to make it over the Lewis Pass and into Hamner Springs before dark. I definitely didn't even remotely make it before dark, but luckily after that dang Takaka Hill, all of these mountain roads with their well-graded and well-spaced curves are no problem!