Day 0: Arrive, Tour Christchurch, Riding Near Christchurch

This post covers two days. We arrived about 10am on Friday, after having flown out on Wednesday. Somehow Thursday disappeared. Here is a picture of the sunrise about 6am over the Pacific. We were near Pago Pago. At that point we still had four hours to go. This is an amazing distance. 7,000 miles from San Francisco to New Zealand with nothing but ocean and some tiny remote islands along the way.

Here we are at the airport at the shuttle to the hotel.

After dropping our bags at the hotel we walked in to downtown and found a place for lunch. Over tasty Cauliflower steak we decided to see if we could get our motorcycles a day early. A quick phone call and the answer was yes. We will get our bikes tomorrow (Saturday and do a couple of rides along the coast near Christchurch then back to the hotel. Then Sunday we head out for our 12 day loop through the South Island.

This post will cover two days and I will add the local riding tomorrow night.

After lunch we went in the hop on hop off 125 year old trolly to get a feel for Christchurch. It's a nice city. The trolly driver kept talking about "the earthquake" and pointing out buildings still being reconstructed. Here is the trolly and a few pics of the city.

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