Lions, and Tigers, and Sheep, Oh My!

I'm really not sure what happened to me since coming to New Zealand, but I love animals more than I ever have in the past. According to Buzzfeed, this is all totally normal (See their recent article on why we want to squeeze cute things)

This week was full of wildlife and it made my heart full. 

This guy.

The first was on Thursday when my friend Jess asked me to go for a run with her workmates. When I first heard the route I was pretty hesitant. I had hiked part of the route around this time last year, and tried to run part of it last (New Zealand) summer, but realized it was a tough trail to run.

I could tell Jess really wanted to go, so we went for it. After 1 mile of flat ground it was straight up hill. I was questioning our decision, but when we got to the top.. Sheep! And not only that - So many lambs. I kept thinking "I wonder what Cam would say if I came home holding a lamb and just said I got us a pet?" He might not be so thrilled.

Almost to the top!

So we kept running and a minute later while I was getting distracted by the scenery and the sheep on the left side of the road, I stumbled upon these two cuties on the right. Melt my heart.

Hey guys!

If we just stay still, maybe she won't see us.

And finally, after we started heading down I turned back to the top of the hill and saw the sillhouette of a single sheep and snapped this photo that made me happy.

The rest of the scenery wasn't bad either.

Yep the running route was from the beach, up this hill, and back. At least there were views :)

Always a classic - Port Hills to Bank Peninsula

Finally going down to Taylor's Mistake

After one more hill and a few more miles, we were back at the starting point. 8.5 miles and according to my iPhone health app, 107 flights of stairs climbed.


This Saturday Cam and I went out for a much more intentional and less tiring animal experience. 

My friend, Jess (same as before), is a volunteer at Orana Wildlife Park. They have an amazing lion encounter we had been meaning to go to. We chose this Saturday to bite the bullet and go. We showed up around noon in time to feed the giraffes, then walked around the park for a couple hours, saw the tiger being fed, and finally made our way to the lion encounter.

Tiger being fed - Apparently oppotunistic eaters, they eat whatever they can,
 whenever they can.
Don't want to cross one in the wild.

We mainly went to the giraffe encounter because Jess was there, but this ended up maybe being my favorite part (hard to beat the lion encounter but the giraffes were so funny!) I had imagined giraffes as beautiful elegant creatures without much personality, but at least the ones at Orana were pretty cheeky. I found them to have so much personality!

That face.

First of all their heads are just so big. And they stretch their neck to wherever the food is which just seems unnatural. They chew these crazy weeds that are rough and pokey, definitely not a plant that any human would ever want and once its in their mouth it was crazy to see how big their chewing muscles were. One muscle above their eye was literally pulsing.

I'll have that.

That's mine too.

They were not messing around at the feeding - any food they saw was well within their reach and they were going for it. One little girl was holding her branch, not ready to give it up, and was a little bit out of reach for the giraffe's large head. So Zuri (that's the giraffe's name) just stuck her white-ish-gray-really-rough tounge straight out of her mouth and took the branch from the little girl's hand. Needless to say, she stared crying. While everyone around was laughing, Zuri was just not phased. She was on to the next branch.

Mine please.

Before we left I got to know the other giraffe. We bonded. It was great. I want to go back again and see these giraffes before I leave.

True love.

And finally, the LION encounter.

The lion encounter was everything I dreamed it would be. Basically, you go in a cage in the back of a truck, which drives in to the lion enclosure, and the keepers feed the lions meat, which encourages them to jump on the sides and top of the cage. Luckily for sharing this story, my friend Jess watched the encounter from outside and snapped some photos.

That's me looking scared, and Cam taking the photos. What a guy ;)

From the inside it looked more like this:

Lion on top of the cage!
(I accidentally wrote "cafe" at first, but i guess that works too)

LION KING!

Feed me!

In case you couldn't tell from the photos the lions are HUGE. I mean look at that paw. (There seems to be a theme today - animals are much larger in real life than they appear on TV. Turns out the camera doesn't add 10 pounds)

And that HEAD.

The interesting thing about the lions at Orana is that they were snipped when they were young because they are all related and Orana didn't want any inbreeding to occur. So these lions don't have any manes and the main way to tell if they're male or female is just how giant they are (slightly giant = female, seriously giant = male). I'm not sure if this lack of testosterone affects their roar, but it wasn't the most intense roar I ever imagined. I call this video "Working on my ROAR".

These lions are also a bit on the chubby side as lions go, since they get fed a ton at the wildlife park. Daily visitors and shows mean they get a good bit of food. Apparently the park lets them gain some weight for the cold New Zealand winters but theyre currently beginning their diet. So, I think a real safari is in my future - gotta find some skinny lions with manes to get the full experience - but the lion encounter was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and probably one of the most unique encounters of most zoos.

Clearly, I loved it. Lion in the background is not so sure.

Next up - swimming with fur seals in Kaikoura next weekend. It's the capital of whale watching in New Zealand, but I've been whale watching many a time in my life (not that I wouldn't go again) but my friend Jess (who I've now mentioned multiple times in this post) and I decided to try to swim with seals. Stay tuned for that!

Also Orana had ducklings!
I've never seen so many ducklings that just wanted to say hi.
And their mom (luckily) didn't mind!

Stoked For Saturday

 This week was full of new discoveries. We discovered weekly 5ks in the park for $5, which include a free sausage at the finish line; I learned what a "busker" is and attended the world famous Buskers Festival right here in Christchurch; and finally we discovered an amazing New Zealand travel blog, stoked for Saturday and enjoyed an amazing Saturday of hiking, dining, and dance-partying.

There isn't much to say about the 5k except that we ran it, so I'll start with the buskers festival. CPIT, a university in Christchurch, actually has a circus school, so the busking/street performing culture is really big here. Once a year all the top street performers from around the world come to Christchurch for 10 days to perform. There are many free acts all day in the park, but the headliners cost $10-$20 in venues at night. The prices are really reasonable considering that when the performers have shows in London they charge anywhere from $40 to $80/show. On Wednesday a group from the office went to see three standup comedians and a hilarious Australian MC at the casino. I believe they were all British, and they were pretty funny. The first comedian had a joke about the way kiwis say "eh?" at the end of their sentences as if they're asking you a multiple choice question. Example: "the weather's great today a)?........ Or b) the weather fucking sucks" I ran this one past Cam, my resident kiwi expert, and he said that is, in fact exactly what they mean. Good. Thought so.

The comedians were so good, we decided to go to another show. We had heard that one performer, "the boy with tape on his face", was particularly good and wins this festival all the time -- this was also verified by my resident kiwi expert-- so we bought tickets to see him. His show, which here costs $15 NZD, goes for $40 pounds in England. That's $82 New Zealand dollars! He's essentially a mime with a production team so there's a good amt of music and lights that go along with his act and the show is 90% audience participation. It was really entertaining but I think I preferred the stand up comedians.

Those two buskers events kept the week moving really quickly. The last thing I wanted to do early Saturday morning was to get out of bed and go on a massive hike -- but hey, when in New Zealand.

We found a blog this week called Stoked for Saturday- written by two engineers who moved to New Zealand, work during the week, and explore the country on weekends. Sounds pretty familiar eh? (Or b) not at all). This weekend we didn't have a trip planned but couldn't let a gorgeous weekend go, so in true #stokedforsaturday fashion we had a really epic Saturday. Mike and I met Jen and Keith at their house Saturday morning and we drove about two hours in the the center of the country.

The hiking crew -- Same group minus Nick who did the Routeburn

The New Zealand Southern Alps run up the middle of the country, but you can pass through them by using either Arthur's Pass or Lewis Pass. I drove through Arthur's Pass early in my time here and had been wanting to go back for a hike, so was thrilled when my coworkers suggested doing Avalanche Peak this weekend.

Arthurs Pass back in October

The hike is meant to take 4 hours to get to the top of what is called "Avalanche Peak", so five minutes in when I was climbing a nearly vertical rock wall, I was nervous. I had expected a much more well maintained track, like the Routeburn we went on in November, but if I've learned anything in NZ, it's that nothing is going to go as planned. We continued on and made it to the top in two hours. DOC time estimate crushed again :) .

The first thing you see coming out of the bushline

The views at the top were amazing. I couldn't believe we were on top of the mountains and we could see the tops of all of them as well as the Devil's Punchbowl Falls. 

Found a Kea!

Avalanche peak actually had has two paths to the top. The first, Avalanche Peak Track, which is steep and rocky is the one we took up. The other one is Scott's Track, longer and less steep but with better views. We took Scott's track down, as as promised the views were awesome.

 

By the time we got to the bottom, all of us were exhausted and so we quickly got in the car and rode home. 

It's rare for us to come back to Chch on a Saturday night after being away, so we were all in group-travel mode and wanted to keep hanging out.

Kentucky Sours making us feel right at home

We went to Boo Radleys, the bar above Tequila Mockingbird (Get it?) for a cocktail and Keith put a $2 coin on the table in case anyone wanted to play pool. Instead, I suggested we save the coin for the Dance-o-Mat that I had been to with Cam and his friends the night before. All of my friends said they had seen it but never tried it,so we decided Saturday was going to be the night. After some amazing mexican food we went down to the Dance-o-mat. 

What's a dance-o-mat? Just another reason to love Christchurch. (Skye, I wish we had gone!!)

In one of the abandoned lots in downtown Christchurch, right next to the partially collapsed cathedral, there is a dance platform with a laundry machine and when you put a $2 coin in, lights come on to light up the dance floor and you can play music from your iPod for half an hour! When we stumbled upon it in Friday, Cam's friends didn't go for my tswift suggestion, so my friends and I started the dance party with some "Shake It Off." Jen DJ'ed for a few more songs until the Christchurch curfew turned off the dance-o-mat -- definitely not the city that never sleeps. 

After a busy day and a busy evening, I was ready to walk home and fall asleep. Pretty awesome week if I do say so myself. Can't wait for the next one. #stokedfornextsaturday

Just one more thing... Christchurch and it's port hills/mountains were beautiful this week.

Christchurch from an early morning run in the porthills

Hagley Park

Sumner Beach

Lyttleton

Hiking Chch

Christchurch really grew on me his week. The clouds went away and despite a couple overnight rain showers, the weather really improved. It's still much colder than I thought it would be -- looks like I won't be needing all those tank tops I packed -- but I took the opportunity to get outside and get moving. I took almost the first week off as I adjusted to jet lag. It's a 17 hour difference so I was too tired after work and I was putting in serious effort to try to sleep until my alarm in the morning, so I figured waking up the sun was probably counter productive. As the jet lag wore off I was able to run after work, and it felt so good :)

Stop 1: Hagley Park and the Christchurch Botanical Gardens 
I'm about a mile from Hagley Park, a large park that has so much going on. There's a golf course, rugby fields, a little lake, the Christchurch Botanical Gardens and so much more. I found a nice running route around the north part of the park, and through the botanical gardens. The strange part is, there are hardly any people running here! The park has a presence in the city like central park, and some people run the outside loop of the park, but there aren't too many people cutting around the trails. Such a change for me! Also the "river" here is more like a creek. One of my coworkers told me to run along the river, and that was definitely not what I expected.



Bridge over the "River" in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens

Stop 2: Rapaki Track

This is the "hill" Sarah wanted to run up last weekend. It's actually a track, maintained by the government and hikers are warned that it is "extremely steep" in some places.

The Final Ascent

With the long weekend, nearly everyone in the office decided to travel (oh yeah, I forgot to mention Monday is NZ labour day). So Friday after work I went out to try to Rapaki track again. It was just as beautiful as last time, but this time on my way down I caught the sunset- amazing.

Sunset on the Way Down Rapaki Track

 I love this route because you get to be so close to so many sheep and the way they look at you just makes me laugh. 



Everybody Smile!



I posted this before, but I love the way this guy just looked at me as I was running down. Not as scared of humans as they probably should be.

The Rapaki Track also is one of those routes that rewards you at the top. The top of the track is at the summit of the port hills, and when you get there you look on to the bay on the other side of the hills that you wouldn't be able to see any other way. It really is incredible. The picture I took really doesn't so it justice. Mom, I'm hoping you'll try this one day Christchurch cause your photo will certainly be better than mine. 



View from the Top!

Clearly I would recommend this to a friend.

Stop 3: Taylor's Mistake

Today my only real plan was to move in to Sarah's apartment, but not until late afternoon, so I decided to drive out to Taylor's Mistake and do the 3-hour hike there. This one was a little different from Rapaki Track because it's on the water the whole way and you're going from the top of one of the port hills, around the hill and then down to Taylor's Mistake beach. The drive to get there was terrifying! It's a one lane road, for two-way traffic, on the side of a mountain, with no guardrail. On the way up you're on the outside lane (driving on the left) and I wasn't entirely sure I was going the right way, so when I finally got to the carpark I was so relieved. There were a couple steep parts but generally not too bad. I think I'll try to run it next time.

Headed to that little patch of sand in the middle of the frame



Another view - this time showing the track I'm walking on along the way



A look back along the track

Made it.




Almost back to the start you walk along this gorgeous bay



Last turn before the top