World Buskers Festival brings crowd-pleasing acts to Christchurch

Seeing an eight-foot-tall unicycle isn’t a daily occurrence for me. Being in an elevator with an eight-foot-tall unicycle and its rider certainly was a first for me yesterday.

But when buskers are in town, such encounters are to be expected.

The buskers? In the simplest definition, buskers are street performers. But they bring much more to town than the amateur shows at Mallory Square in Key West.

Each year, the World Buskers Festival descends upon Christchurch for 11 days, bringing national and international entertainers to the city streets around Cathedral Square, Victoria Square, and the Arts Centre. Save a few shows, the performances are free except for the highly sought-after donations to buckets and hats.

Straightjackets, swords (to swallow!), and pogo sticks abound in solo, duo, and group performances throughout the day. Slackwire Sam, who traveled from Vermont to perform, juggled flaming batons while riding his unicycle across a slack-rope.

However no one I’ve watched competes with FUSE Circus. The five Kiwis (New Zealanders) take to an aerial performance stage to swing high above the crowd on trapezes, flip from bar to bar, and twist on aerial fabrics. The audience gasped every time a group member went airborne across the stage outstretched toward another member’s hands.

FUSE Circus’ human balancing acts likewise garnered audible compliments from the crowd. I still am in awe remembering my favorite balancing stunt of the evening (pictured top left).

Pictured: FUSE Circus performing in Victoria Square on Tuesday, January 27.

Hotel SO’s stellar location offsets shoebox-sized rooms

Advertised as ergonomically designed, Hotel SO fails to mention that its modern rooms might also give you claustrophobia.

During our weeklong stint in Christchurch, I’m staying at the newly-opened Hotel SO in central Christchurch. The techno music blaring in the lobby welcomes international visitors of all ages, avoiding language discrimination with its wordless beat.

My room exudes all that is hip: a flat-screen TV, mood lighting, and sleek built-in cabinets. Other hip features aren’t exactly to my liking. Take the raised, built-in bed for example. It feels like a ship’s bed with walls on three sides and an annoying blue nightlight underneath (although I know some people would like the light). I can’t imagine sleeping with another person in the bed. Whoever was against the wall would literally have to climb over the other person to reach the bathroom during the night.

Speaking of the bathroom, I refer to it as “the bubble.” Three steps away from my bed, the bubble contains a compact bathroom surrounded by rounded, frosted glass doors—not private from the room in the least. The sink, toilet, and shower are mere inches apart. You can utilize everything in the bathroom within an arm’s length.

I guess that I should consider myself lucky though. Why? I have a window! Many rooms have the same layout as mine but have a mirror instead of a window to deceptively enlarge the space.

Hotel SO’s location certainly counterbalances the squished rooms though. Two parks, delicious restaurants (highly recommend the chicken masala at Little India where I ate last night), trendy shops and bars, and numerous museums surround the hotel within a 10-minute walk. With all that awaits my exploration in Christchurch, I don’t plan on spending much time in the hotel anyway.

Pictured: My Hotel SO room. Notice how I had to pile all my bags against the door to take clean pictures.

In and around Christchurch

Considering it was noon in Georgia, my body awoke at 6 a.m. here yesterday. No need to waste the morning, so a walk through Hagley Park was in order. A mere five-minute walk from my hotel, Hagley adjoins the west edge of central Christchurch. The immense paved walkways overlook the park’s lakes, golf course, and soccer fields. And unlike many city parks in the States, no homeless people slept on the benches and trash was nonexistent. The only dilemma: which side of the path to walk on. Road paintings contradicted each other, some guiding walkers to the left and others to the right. No one I passed seemed to know either, as they walked on both sides.

My pasty white skin yearned for some sun. Off to Taylors Mistake. A beach that is, despite the unsuggestive name. Plenty of empty sand in the early afternoon, prior to the influx of locals, yielded a play place for paddleball with my new friends Tee and Wes. The chilly water felt like that at Maine’s Acadia National Park in the summer or like jumping in a lake during late fall. Completely worth the chill bumps to body surf some waves. Watching the hang gliders taking off from nearby peaks and flying overhead increased my desire to test out this adventure activity.

Just a 20-minute drive away and linked to Christchurch via a road tunnel, the town of Lyttelton holds the area’s harbor and delicious ice cream. In the heart of town, Empire General Store’s ice cream options range from boysenberry to chocolate fudge. At the recommendation of Tee, I opted for Gold Rush, a butter cream flavor with crispy chocolate chunks.

Back in the city, the eating continued with dinner at Portofino, an Italian restaurant on the Avon River, which looks like a creek. I couldn’t finish my generous serving of rigatoni with spinach, sundried tomatoes, and cream sauce. I learned that New Zealand wine lives up to its reputation with some Allan Scott Chardonnay.

The nightlife had just started at 205 bar. The exposed brick walls and long drapes surrounding nooks of seating created a cozy interior for drinks. Jetlag caught up with me shortly thereafter, culminating my night back in my tiny Hotel So room….more on the accommodations later.

Pictured: Taylors Mistake

Getting there is NOT half the fun

The saying “Getting there is half the fun” applies only to travel when you stop along the way for random exploration, such as eating coconut ice cream off the Hana Road en route to the black sand beaches.

Four flights, totaling twenty-four hours, only makes the destination all the more desirable.

On my Atlanta to San Francisco leg, my seatmate sprayed me with spit upon talking. My headphones and fake sleeping didn’t stop him from talking to me either. I’m considered talkative, but he rendered me a mute.

The San Francisco to Auckland flight rewarded me with an improved seatmate, an Aussie woman who provided countless tips for my late February Sydney trip. But thirteen hours in one seat just isn’t comfortable, despite Air New Zealand's relatively spacious seating.

Arriving in Christchurch, New Zealand to sunny skies and 75 degrees Fahrenheit weather made me quickly forget my stiff legs and slight headache. I’ll gladly put up with twenty-four hours in the air for this city, which proves lovely already.

Going Down Under

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page,” Saint Augustine once said.

My mom shared this quote with me after finding it in a book during our travels in Cape Town, South Africa last summer. Saint Augustine’s words resonate strongly with me, as I constantly desire to learn about our global community.

Please join me as I explore New Zealand and Australia while working for UGA Studies Abroad in the South Pacific and Caribbean. To learn about the program, visit Australia and New Zealand: Spring Semester.

Special thanks to April, Kristen, and Larry for assisting with the naming of this blog!