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Christchurch Gondola
We're going for a walk. We might be gone some time...
Sunday 27th March 2005

After exhausting a number of the city centre attractions of Christchurch, Jo and I decided to check out the Christchurch Gondola. Following an aborted attempt on Saturday (which we gave up on due to rain and low cloud meaning we wouldn't have been able to see anything) we tried again on the Sunday, this time with more success. For a given value of success anyway.

Given she wasn't working we were joined, somewhat reluctantly, by Jo's sister Bernie, who lives in Christchurch, but originally hails from Mackay like Jo (oddly enough). I say reluctantly as she wasn't very keen on the vertiginous aspect of the ascent, but she seemed happy enough when we finally got to the top. The trip only takes a couple of minutes to travel the 1km or so journey in a wee 4-person cabin with windows on all sides. They're rather like the sort of thing you'd see at a ski complex and I briefly wondered whether they were used as such in the winter months until I realised that there were no runs visable and it probably doesn't snow enough. You get some excellent views of Christchurch and it's surroundings, although Chrischurch from a distant elevated position isn't the most visually exciting metropolis ever seen.

At the top of the gondola ride is the rather grandiosely named "Summit Complex", which is 90% gift shop. There's some sort of time-tunnel interactive exhibition thing up there, but due to events which I will shortly relate, we never actually got around to seeing it. It might have been exciting, intriguing and life-affirming, but I kind of doubt it.

Outside of the complex, once we'd figured out how to get outside and escape the giftshop, there are very good views down the other side of the hill towards Lyttelton Harbour and the whatever-its-called Penninsula. There are also two walks, one "crater" walk with a duration of 30 minutes and another one to a womens' memorial that took 50 minutes. I was keen to do the crater walk as it sounded a little more exciting, and the others were happy as it was the shorter of the two. Bernie hadn't intended to come on the trip at all and so was wearing flips-flops (or thongs as my Australian readership would call them) which weren't all that practical for extended hiking.

The walk started well with fairly easy ambling along a hillside path, but we quickly hit a snag with directions. A thoroughly confusing sign along the path seemed to indicate that the Crater walk was in two different directions at once. I could only assume this meant that it was a circular path and whichever route was taken, we'd wind up back at that spot. Apparently I was wrong.

The path along the hillside began to get steadily more overgrown, muddier and enclosed. On our left were either inpenetrable scrub on steep hillside or outright vertical cliffs. The other side, whilst providing an ongoing view of Lyttelton and its environs, was a steep drop and yet more thick scrub.

After the first hour we started to get suspicious. By this stage all of us had fallen over at least once, and the mood was definitely being to fray. Well, except for Bernie, who seemed to be finding her inadvisable choice of footware are general muddiness kind of entertaining. We met an old man who was showing us up by jogging along the track in the same direction as us. We asked him about the crater walk and he seemed to think we were lost, which we already knew damn well. He also mentioned that the path we were on eventually lead to Sumner on the coast, some considerable distance away. He reckoned our best bet was to turn back.

Not possessing such a quitters spirit, we decide to plunge on. I had my trusty GPS on me, and could see a road on the map not far from us. Unfortunately, whilst it has highly accurate maps with roads and lanes on it, the one thing it doesn't display is contour lines and the road in question was only a handful of metres aways on the horizontal plane, but considerably more in the vertical. Lacking the urge to try outright rock-climbing we continued on. And on. Eventually the landscape started to flatten out again, as it often does when it gets closers to the coast. Standing on wind-hammered hilltop we could look down on Sumner with something approaching dismay.

At this point a number of options were discussed, none of them involving the return along the precipitous path we'd just taken. We could try and get down to Sumner and get a bus back. Did the city buses go to Sumner though? A taxi would be expensive, and besides it's hard to persuade a taxi-driver to pick you up from a set of lattitude and longitude coordinates. In the end we realised the best option was to follow the road around the other side of the hills we'd just trekked along and get back to the gondola. Besides, we'd paid for a return ticket and we were damn well going to get our moneys-worth.

So for the next hour we plodded along the road, occassionally having to get out of the way of either wirey mountain-bikers tearing down the hill or massive SUVs haring back up it again. We spotted some some bizzare mushrooms on the road sides too, many of which looked like they really ought to have a tiny door in the base with a pixie relaxing inside. The were probably horrendously poisonous and despite being somewhat hungry after the unintentional hours of hiking, there was no urge to eat any of them.

As we trudged along we debated the merits of trying to hitch a ride, but no friendly person with an empty four-doored car drove past. At least none that looked sufficiently harmless to warrant sticking our thumbs out.

Probably harmless, definitely ecentric, and certainly in no position to give us a life anywhere was the man and (presumably his wife - her crash helmet had "co-pilot" written across the back of it) we saw driving around the countryside in some sort of three-wheel sportscar. Possessing a beard you could lose a badger in and wearing an amicable expression and a leather flying helmet, he was merrily driving past when we tried to take a photo. When he noticed, he actually pulled over to let us do so. Afterwards the pair drove off grinning, leaving us the last hill to climb back to to the summit centre and the gondola homewards. I still have no idea how we managed to get off track so badly, nor do I actually know where the mythical crater that we were trying to see was in the end. The gondola is well worth going to, you're probably just better staying in the gift shop. Then again, maybe that's why they made it tricky to get out of...