One of the annual summer events that takes place every summer in Christchurch is the international buskers festival. For this festival the city of Christchurch invites 30 or so of the best street performers in the world to come to the city for a week and perform their acts. The city pays for their plane ticket but once they are here it is up to them to make their own money by doing what they do best, busking. Jocelyn and I went to about 10 of the acts and they ranged from very good to down right horrible. We must first disclaim that we both have high expectations for buskers because we have seen some truly memberable performances in Boston. To start with the bad, the first act we say was a “strong lady.” Although this lady hyped up her act a lot most of her feats of strength were things that required knowing the right trick rather than being super strong. One example of this was ripping a phone book in half, take a look here to see how it is done (phonebook trick). My theory is that she was trying to hide the fact that she was very overweight by calling herself strong so people might thing the fat was actually muscle. There were a few other sub par acts but I will spare you the details. Some of our favorite acts included a duo from New Hampshire, a freak from the UK, and a fire dance troupe from Australia. The duo from New Hampshire performed many acrobatic feats with a comedic flare. Our favorite trick was when one of them did a headstand with no hands on the other guy’s head, who was standing.
The freak from the UK also had an interesting show that was mainly based on the fact that he could easily dislocate his shoulders allowing him to contour his body in various ways. This in itself was good, although kind of gross to watch, but the real thing that made his performance memorable was his comedic evolvement with the audience. In one part of the act he basically tricks a female volunteer from the audience into giving him a kiss. He then apologies to her boyfriend, at first you think he saying sorry for kissing the girl but then he says he his sorry for leaving the boyfriend out and runs over to kiss him as well. Another one of our favorite acts was a night show called FlameOz. This was a group of about 5 people the performed a few dance and martial arts routines all while carrying either poles or hula-hoops that where on fire. In the dark night it really looked cool, but the true highlight of the show was a guy that did a great crystals ball manipulation routine that you can watch an example of here. It looked even better than this at night because the lights made the chrstal appear bright but it was dark enough the you could not see his hands well. This guy really put David Bowie in labyrinth to shame. Overall the festival was fun and we are going to try to go to even more acts next year.
The very next weekend Jocelyn and I decided to go horseback riding. We got dressed in our finest horseback riding garb and drove to the waimakariri river just north of Christchurch where the horse ranch was located. As we arrived the weather was a little bit overcast but being New Zealand we knew this could change any minute so we were both hoping that the sun would come out during our ride. We met our guide and she taught us the basic techniques about riding a horse such as mounting, dismounting, turning, stopping, etc. We then mounted our horses and stared out on the trail. Since it was a slow day at the horse ranch, Jocelyn and I got our own private guide, and for the first half of the ride we actually had two guides with the other guide training a new horse. This particular horse ranch get there horses’ from the race track. This means they are not used to walking along rivers and forests or going a slow pace so a good amount of training is needed before they are ready for an inexperienced rider. The first part of the ride took us along the waimakariri river and then into a small forest. By this time the sun was coming out and it was turning into a very nice day. After the first hour of the ride both Jocelyn and I started to feel more comfortable on the horses, with the hardest part being trying to prevent them from eating the leaves off the trees. The second half of the trek took us threw a large grassy area and then to the river bank. Here our guide told us that we were going to try some short river crossings and gave us a few pointers on what to do and warned us that both of our horses like to play in the water so try to keep them moving. This worked for the first crossing, which was through a very shallow area of the river. Before the second crossing to leave the river area we were told that our horses will probably start to run to get up the steep bank of the river shore so we should grab on to their mains to make sure we do not fall backwards. I think this was one instruction too many because as we were worried about the horses running to fast we forgot to make sure they didn’t stop in the water. Halfway to the shore Jocelyn’s horse stopped and started to splash the water with its front legs. My horse saw this, and must of though it looked like a lot of fun so he started splashing as well. After a minute or two Jocelyn got hers moving again, but I had not such luck. I think after another few minutes my horse decided he had done a good enough job thoroughly soaking me and then proceeded to run to the shore with me barely hanging on. Once on dry land the sun was strong enough that it dried me out in a just a few minutes. We now started to head back to the ranch, our two hour ride was coming to an end, and I think both of us were ready to be off the horses since are bums were getting a little bit sore. Once we dismounted our horses were given water and food as we tried to get used to walking again. We then headed back to the city to grab a bite to eat and head home to relax.
Sorry about the lack of pictures for the horse back riding but we decided it might be safest to leave the camera in the car for this adventure, which judging by how much Trey got wet was probably a good idea,
