CHAMPIONS!

Christchurch International Airport, New Zealand-  A lot of times when a team wins a title people will say that the journey to get there was the reward or some other cliché like that…well our journey to watch the Super Bowl was definitely not a reward.  The game as everyone knows definitely was amazing though.

We woke up at 5:30 am to drive from Franz Josef to Christchurch where we planned to watch the game.  Google maps said it would take 4:47 (447…I  can’t make this stuff up) to do the drive so we figured leaving by 6 would give us more than enough time.  Our route was supposed to take us over the mountains on Arthur’s Pass and we were making great time when we came to that point about 2 hours into the drive.  The problem was that with all the rain (at that point it had been raining for over 36 hours straight since we had been there) mountain passes apparently become dangerous so it was closed.  The road worker said we could try Lewis Pass but it would add about an hour to the drive and we had no directions for that route.  What choice did we have though…we had a Super Bowl to watch.

Other than the continuous rain, we had no trouble getting through the Lewis pass thankfully.  The extra time did make it a tight race to get to a place with the game on though.  The drive ended up taking over 6 hours so we walked into a bar with 11 minutes to go in the 1^st quarter.  Not too bad all things considered.  We immediately made friends with Vince (fitting as the star of Entourage is named that) from Canada who had a Packers shirt on.  There were probably about 5-10 other people there as well who would become friends eventually.  One group of guys was from Germany and Denmark and one kid lived in Appleton for a while so he was a Packers fan.  His Denmark friends had no idea what was going on as they were “just trying to learn the game.”  I did not have the time or patience to teach them during this game. 

TD shots with our friends Germany (left) and Vince!

I won’t go through a personal recap of the game as you all watched it and know how great it was.  I will say when Woodson went down I said the only thing keeping him out was a broken bone…really feel bad that ended up being the case but so awesome the other guys stepped up.  I also want to publicly announce my love for Aaron Rodgers…I heart #12. 

After the game, we were apparently all partied out as we slept for 12-14 hours and the hotel we were at was shocked to find us still in the room after check out…sorry random hotel lady.  We spent the rest of our day in Christchurch walking around the park and then played a par 3 golf course.  Well I played and April caddied.  I think her yardage reads for me were off because I shot 12 over and some of the holes were less than 80 yds long.  It certainly was not my inability to hit the ball straight or in the air. 

Sweet swing! (ignore ball still on tee)

Fattest ducks we've ever seen hanging out on the course.

We are now headed to Auckland for a couple days before finally getting back to Sydney for the final stop.  There has been a lot of exciting things so far in the trip and we really can’t believe there is less than a week left.  We love reading everyone’s comments on here though so don’t be shy.  Checking for new comments is the first thing we do whenever we can find internet!

GO PACK GO!