Everything was absolutely gorgeous!!! After a great night's sleep in a cozy little hotel, KL and I decided to go on a morning jog around Hagley Park. Everything we saw during our run was beautiful (and we managed not to get too lost)! We checked out of our "luxury" hotel ready to embark on the next 2 weeks of hostel adventures! This would be our last night in Christchurch, and X Base Hostel was our home. We had booked a 10 person room and it was perfect. The hostel was 4 stories high and full of individually locked rooms (so only the 10 people in our actual room had access to our stuff - and we had a locker for our valuables). There was a group of Australian girls sharing our room with us, who had actually just come from Queenstown and Franz Josef and gave us some good pointers. After checking in and dumping our luggage (and locking up our computers, passports, and valuables) we headed up to find a good place for lunch. We found this adorable vegetarian cafe for lunch. it was on the 2nd story overlooking cathedral square and it was seriously sooo cute and the food was wonderful! We looked through our free mini guide books we had picked up along the way and found this place called Willowbank Wildlife Reserve. After having an idea of what we wanted to do (see some kiwis!!) we headed back to the hostel and met up with Liz, who had just arrived from Singapore. We almost went to the aquarium/kiwi viewing center that had 2 kiwis behind glass for $16 but decided to go to Willowbank to see kiwis in their "natural habitat"...little did we know how much more we would actually get... We also almost paid $10 each for a taxi there then found out it was a 5 min walk to a $2.60 city bus!! So....we get there and it is amazing. There were so many animals! Like I can't even start to name them all but I'll highlight some....eels, ostrich, sheep, cows, ducks, otters, monkeys, crazy birds - obviously kiwis, and wallabys...WE FEED, TOUCHED, AND ESSENTIALLY PETTED 2 WALLABYS FOR 20 MINUTES!!!! then after it finally hopped away we realized it had a baby in it's pouch the whole time!!
This was an incredible surprise!!
We caught the bus back then walked through the Bontanical Gardens.
We ate dinner at this really good restaurant recommended to us by a local on the bus then headed back to the hostel waiting for Caitlin to arrive (and all ended up passing out before she even got there).
Its only day 2 and this trip has been absolutely amazing!!!
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