Flight of the Conchords live in Christchurch!

Since you are friends with Scott and I, you should definitely know who Flight of the Conchords are. But in case you somehow don't, they are are Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement, a comedy duo from Wellington New Zealand. They are most known for their show on HBO, which unfortunately only ran for 2 seasons despite being mostly pure hilarious awesomeness (my official opinion). But they've also seen success as live performers and also separately as an actor (Jermaine) and/or oscar-winning song writer (Bret) and/or elf (Bret). 

We've been lucky enough to see FotC twice in the past: at the Sasquatch music festival in 2008 and then in 2009 in Las Vegas with our awesome friends Christine and Duncan! The Vegas show unfortunately had some disappointments that tainted the experience (mostly not being able to bring in our awesome hot dog sign, and also having seats near the bar where everyone talked loudly (many people at the show seemed to have no interest in actually watching it)). But we have put that in the past and were excited for our third FotC experience!

Despite being from New Zealand, the guys have actually never done a tour here before. So it was pretty awesome that it happened during our visit and that we were able to get tickets. We actually almost missed the chance, and only noticed they were on sale after many shows were already sold out! But luckily Christchurch still had tickets, though we were stuck with seats that were described as "obstructed view". Oh well, it will still be awesome. 

And it was! Our seats were not bad at all, we were actually pretty close to the stage (much closer than for Katy Perry, haha). Arj Barker opened (a comedian, who also plays pawn shop guy Dave on the show) and then Flight of the Conchords came on for a great set. They played lots of old favourite and also a few new songs, and there was also plenty of dry witty banter between songs, classic FotC. Top it off with a couple "costumes" and accompaniment from the National New Zealand Sympathy Orchestra (aka Neil) and you've got one awesome show! We also got awesome t-shirts.

It was a late night drive back to Kaikoura after the show but definitely worth it! Dexter even got a big play at the dog park, so even he didn't think it was a waste of a drive :)

Watching Flight of the Conchords TV show in prep for the concert.
Dexter gets excited by all the sheep in the final episode. 

Sheep sheep sheep sheep! 

Big jump up at the agility park for Dexter!

Majestic King of the Castle

Ticket! Our seats turned out to be not too bad!

Sold out show...decent view of the stage!

Check out my awesome new shirt! (Scott's not wearing his new one here, but his is also cool)

Arj Barker gets us laughing

Excellent robot head costumes from THE DISTANT FUTURE

And some capes

All the ladies checking out Bret's Sugar Lumps

Epic traffic trying to leave the parking area... soooo bad. Sadly we had a 2.5 hour drive home after the parking lot, too! 

Scott's new shirt is awesome too!

Dexter wants to be friends with a seal

As we've mentioned, there are a lot of seals on the shores of Kaikoura. Dogs aren't allowed on the peninsula area where the main colony is, but the seals appear lots of other places too. You'd think it would be hard for a seal to surprise you, but when you are walking or running along the coast, often you will look over and see one Right There, just laying in the sun. Sometimes they get a bit annoyed if you are close, but we usually try and keep our distance (which is what all the signs say you are supposed to do too). 

Dexter finds these events very exciting. He gets to see lots of seals on runs and walks, but alas he is never allowed to go sniff them. Poor Dexter! Once I was running with him and he saw a seal slip into the water. The next many minute were filled with Dexter frantically scanning the water to see where this strange "water dog" went. Every now and then the seal would pop it's head up and Dexter would get excited all over again. I wonder what he would have done if I had let him in the water...probably would have been to scared to actually go near it, haha. 

Today there was a seal on the beach near our house where we play fetch. We walked over to have a look but the seal mostly ignored us (we didn't get too close). I had my camera for once!

What's that over there?!

Please can I go meet him?

Pretty much my second favourite movie ever based on a board game

There is a little theater in Kaikoura that shows movies on the weekend. We've been waiting for a good movie to play so we can go check it out, and the closest we've got is Battleship on this weekend. Ok fine, we'll go see it. 

We arrived about 15min before the movie was due to start, and were the first ones there. When we purchased our ticket from the bored-looking lady at the "concession stand" (aka cans of pop and a few choices of chocolate bars) she said "Hopefully some more people show up, or they won't show the film". They need about a half-dozen people to show the movie, but luckily enough people trickeled in that we were able to see it. Yay.

I was expecting an exciting action-packed movie with a terrible plot, and I was not disappointed! The plot was perhaps even more terrible than expected, but hey, sometimes that makes it even funnier. The best part *SPOILER ALERT* was when they had to semi-blindly launch missiles at the bad guys, using a grid system to estimate where the enemy ships were. Sounds like a game I once played...

Overall the movie was kind of like Transformers meets Armageddon, with a Yay-US-Navy undertone. If you're looking for some mindless action with ridiculous plot and trying-too-hard acting, this one's for you!

P.S. My first favourite movie based on a board game is Clue. Though here it would probably be called Cluedo

Who ever came up with this terrible movie idea?

Cute little Mayfair Theater in Kaikoura

We're the first ones here...hopefully some more people come. 

Shantytown

We had to hit up the local tourist attraction Shantytown - basically like Heritage Park in Calgary, if it had a gold mining theme. Since it's the off season the place was pretty dead, but it's a neat place to spend a nice day and learn a bit about gold mining. We even got to try panning for gold! I won't be changing professions anytime soon....it's is very tedious. Although we came away with some gold (guaranteed with every try...) it wasn't enough to cover our trip expenses, darn.

One of my favourite parts was getting to ride in the engine of the steam locomotive (a perk that comes when you are the only people on the train). It was also fun chatting with the driver (a real engineer!) and the gold panning guy, hearing a bit about some history of the area.

Arrived at Shantytown

The steam locomotive!

Riding in the passenger compartment on the way there

The engine room!

Looks complicated...

There were lots of cardboard people that talked when you walked by

Just hanging out in the bar

Panning for gold!

There's some gold in there, I swear!

Old printing press

Scott in Stocks

Scott in jail! Oh wait, that's just a mannequin that looks like Scott, haha. 

The old hospital kind of creeped me out

I'm glad we live in the present

Fancy living

Even worse than the hospital! There are flies on all the meat, eww

Giant water wheel

Body of Ice

Glaciers! Oh boy!

On our trip to the west coast, one of the things I really wanted to see was the glaciers (Fox and Franz Josef). After doing some reading on the subject and deciding we didn't want to spend $300ish each to go *on* or inside the glaciers (helicopter flights were included in some of these as well), we picked Fox Glacier to see because: A. it was slightly closer (to the road), and B. the gov't website about the walks in the area of Fox made no mention of being anti-dog, as most walks are in NZ. Sadly B was bogus, no dogs were allowed on the Fox-related walks either, much to Dexter's dismay. :(

Anyways, Fox glacier was pretty cool looking! We learned some neat things as well, like how the ice levels at the bottom of the glacier rely on snowfall levels from 5 years ago, due to how long it takes ice to form and flow down from the collection points at the top. It was also pretty sad, driving up to the glacier and seeing the sign that showed you where the glacier foot was in 1750, about a 5 minute drive further down the valley than where the parking lot is now, which itself is where the foot was in the early 1900s. Sadly almost all glaciers in the world have been in retreat since 1850, with most generally speeding up their retreat around 1980 or so.

After we walked up to the glacier, we drove over to a nearby viewpoint which had this neat contraption for finding mountain peaks and other landscape landmarks (pictured below), and then headed over to Lake Murchison where we supposedly could take some nice reflective pictures of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman (which we did!). In my opinion (at least from this side), Mount Tasman is way more picturesque than Mount Cook, though yeah, Mount Cook is the tallest in NZ, Tasman is a close second. Maybe one day Tasman will reign supreme.

Dexter's all ready for his hike over to Fox Glacier! We hit the parking lot without any signs saying no dogs! It's a miracle!

Just to the right of this info board was the tiniest little no dog sign. SIGH. We're such responsible dog owners..

Watch out for falling rocks on this totally open section of valley!

Ah, there it is! Fox Glacier!

I really like the curved semi-falling patterns here at the foot.

Some light acrobatics are required to get there...

Someone got lazy making two signs. The same outline is used for rocks as ice chunks!

Closer! Still pretty! Kinda wish we could go up to it, but alas, we didn't pay to.

Signs and graphics warning you of the dangers of passing this point.

It was pretty cold here in the shadows, this close to the glacier.

We love ourselves a selfshot!

The neat peak-finding device! Spin to desired peak ...

And look through to find it! This is Mt. Cook.

Dexter loves Fox Glacier! (in the background)

I heard some massive flocking noise coming from the nearby trees so I went and investigated and found this big guy! Turns out it's just the NZ Pigeon though.

There we go! A nice clear shot of Fox Glacier. What a day!

Binney loving the glacier too!

The peaks of Mount Tasman (left) and Mount Cook (right)

We're at Lake Murchison! Neat view!

Very very cool! Reflective as they claimed or better!

Part of the walkway around Lake Murchison, a nice little 3km walk.