Random Pictures

New Year's Eve in downtown Christchurch. We went to a concert held in Cathedral Square. We rang in the New Year with many others and were among the first to be in 2008! Here is a Hedgehog that we keep seeing in our neighborhood.
Daniel was quite proud of himself as he fried us fish, made homemade fries and corn on the cob.
I (Laura) apologize for the shortage of pictures of Daniel. I wasn't able to save most of my pictures to my flash drive for some reason. So, I give him the credit for the photos seen in the last few posts!

Conquering Mt. Herbert

We hiked up Mt. Herbert December 27. The grass was quite thick at times and our legs got scratched up, but it was worth it.The views vastly changed whichever direction you looked.Here is a view from about half way through the hike. It took us around 4.5 hours to reach the top and only around 2 hours to come back down.
On one side you could see Lyttleton Harbor and the Beach over the hills from the harbor(as seen above). The other side was a lake(don't remember the name) and more rolling hills.

Cave Stream

Cave Stream is just down the road from Castle Hill, about an hour outside of Christchurch. About a 5 minute hike downhill and you come to the entrance of the cave. Here is Nick and Laura pumped up and ready to start! As you can see, the cave is very foggy. The water was cold and at one point came up to the chest, but most of the time it was just coming up to the knee. We walked up stream through the cave.

The cave was totally dark, so we all wore headlamps. Here's Nick and Laura still going crazy. Here's Daniel(our photographer) and Laura coming out of the exit. All in all it took about an hour to walk through.
Nick and Laura are very triumphant at their accomplishment! Haha.

A Day at Castle Hill

Here are some stunning photos of Castle Hill. It is a climber's dream with limestone formations jutting out of the hill side. Daniel, Nick (our flatmate) and Laura went for a day and picnicked here, then did some climbing. Nick and Daniel were a lot more courageous in what they attempted to climb. Castle Hill is just an hour or so from Christchurch.
Here's Laura, with Nick waving in the background. Here is someone bouldering. ie. climbing a boulder. It is a very popular sport here.
Another view of the formations.