Where in the World is Saura

Yesterday we finally went into the Botanical Gardens in the center of Christchurch, contained in the huge central park, Hagley Park. There was alot to see and we only wandered around part of the gardens, concentrating mainly on the rose garden. There were many sections to the gardens and if you wanted, you really could walk around all day. The Avon River, which meanders through the city, also winds its way through the gardens. One of the first things you might notice when entering, via a bridge over the Avon, is the very large number of ducks. They are everywhere, and they certainly don’t confine themselves to the river. There are packs of ducks in almost every meadow, and they don’t ever seem to be short of a good meal (all the ducks are fat).

All the gardens are linked by gravel paths and wooden signposts pointing you in the general direction of the particular garden to which you may want to go. I want to emphasize general here, since some of the points to the signs really didn’t make much sense, and didn’t correspond to any path that we could find. If you wander around enough, though, you’ll probably find a sign that does make sense. OK, as Al would like to point out, that may be a bit of an exaggeration as only one sign led to an odd direction , but we did find ourselves slightly confused as to the whereabouts of the Rock Garden. The rose garden is one that is very easy to find.

All entrances to the Rose Garden are flanked by arched trellises covered in roses, opening to winding paths that lead you to just about every type and color of rose that you can image, or at least that I could image. The aroma was so sweet and the colors were so vivid that Alan went into a sensory overload (allergies) and had to retreat to the outside. I’m really trying to improve my photographic skills before we go on our van tour of New Zealand, and here are a few of the pics that came out fairly well. I think I did the gardens some justice, but you really have to be here to appreciate the beauty, and the work that must be going on to keep all those roses in such good shape. (I could demonstrate this by showing pics of my rose bushes, but I’m sure you could image)

From the roses, we went on to the rock garden, and passed by this nice bed of flowers along the way.

So, finding the rock garden was an exercise in Zen patience, as it was this destination that was not so well marked on one sign post (sending us in a direction with no path, thickly wooded and covered in ferns). This is the path we set upon to find this elusive rock garden, which led us in the wrong direction, with the garden being somewhere behind us. I have to say that no matter where you go in the Botanical Gardens you’ll find something worth visiting, so getting lost was not a bad thing.

When we made it to the rock garden, it was surrounded by a lillie pond and a heather garden. There was such a different vibe there than with the roses; it was tranquil and organic ,and it was really very impressive how they can put so much variety into that park.

After our walk in the park, we went back home to work on the van. Al likes to do something every day to get it travel ready. After our old radio blew several fuses and began smoking, Alan installed a new radio and added four new speakers.

For the most part, my contributions to the van have been brainstorming and providing beer, but soon I’ll be putting in some elbow grease of my own. Al’s installed the radio, and has made our fold out camper bed, and I’ll soon be making curtains and painting the brown boards that run along the inside of the van. We have a cooler that plugs into the cigarette lighter and we just bought a plastic storage unit. So we are now just looking for a camping stove, a small fold up table, and Alan is impatiently waiting for me to start on my contributions to the interior design of the van. Here is Saura enjoying the new bench, and I’ll keep updating as we continue this makeover.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.