Our time in Christchurch before the rafting trip was preciously short. So far, I had checked “host family!” and “cadbury speciality chocolate” off the list, and today would see me on a quest for my other favorite things: hokey pokey ice cream and L&P.
For the uneducated, hokey pokey ice cream is vanilla ice cream with little bits of honey toffee mixed in. L&P is sort of lemonade soda, except a bit sweeter than actual lemonade. I am a fiend for both of these things. Nothing can stop me, except for needing to sleep.
Rhett and family’s redeye arrived around 730 AM: prime sleeping hours for my night owl self (I maintain that morning people are not actually human). I collected them in the lobby and creatively stacked their luggage in our pod-like room. I activated my powers of sleep and went straight back to bed for a few hours.
After some much-needed coffee, we took a longer stroll around the botanic gardens to keep awake, exploring its many dark, shaded paths and manicured hedges. I know a grand total of ten things about plants, which is now eleven because I learned that redwood trees can grow in New Zealand.
We hit up the rose garden to do what anyone does in a quiet rose garden after being up all night: take a nap on the soft, soft grass. I took the opportunity to decorate Rhett appropriately.
Around this time, even though we’re dodging in and out of the shade, I realize that I had indeed left my sunscreen back in my room and our pasty northerner skin was burning up like shawty on the dance floor. We couldn’t find any nearby sunscreen, but I did find one of my most favorite New Zealand things: L&P! Yes!
After the rest of the redeye crew could check in to the hotel, I headed over to my host family’s place to hang out before our departure in the late morning. I was also on a holy mission to find Hokey Pokey ice cream, and fortunately the new little park along the river had both places to play and Hokey Pokey to eat!
Despite the terrible and ubiquitous destruction brought on by the 2012 earthquake, Christchurch seems to be making the most of the capability to transform their town into a great place to live and raise a family. The park near my host family’s place was brand-new and had a lot of equipmet. The playground was filled with squishy rubbery not-quite-woodchip material which helped you jumped extra high, and many places to slide on, spin on, or swing from.
The girls found a hokey pokey stand for me, and we sat and watched birds swooping overhead and I recounted for the girls how the last time I was on vacation and there were swooping birds nearby (in Peru!) I was swooped and pooped upon. Not today, I proudly declared to the girls, today was not a day to be pooped on.
Almost on cue, a bird flew by overhead and dropped its payload. Had I not the poop-dodging skills of a ninja protecting her hokey-pokey ice cream, this would have been a recurrence of the Lima Poop Strike. There was screaming. I didn’t claim to be a good, sneaky ninja…just an effective one!
After the park, we were able to grab dinner with my host father, who fortuitously was in town – ramen! Afterward, the girls showed me how pink Fanta shakes from McDonald’s turn your tongue.
Sadly, and after barely-legal traffic maneuvers to get to the hotel parking lot, we parted ways. Tomorrow after a farewell breakfast, we would be off to rafting!