Well it is now the weekend and what was days to go only seems like hours now. It’s Friday night and it’s over to Lyttelton for dinner and the Lyttelton Festival Of Lights. It’s 1600hrs and we decided to go early as we wanted to beat the crowd and to ensure we don’t have to fight for a seat at any of the restaurants. Once over at Lyttelton which was a quick as easy drive, the market food stalls were setting and boy did the aroma of different food flood our hungry nostrils… easy decision, it’s going to be stall food for dinner but first we had to try a Triple Chocolate Milk Stout… Yummy will have that any day. There are people turning up slowly and by 1800 hours the place was packed which we will find out to the extend later when leaving. A clear night but boy It was bitterly cold and many were dressed for the occasion and a few… well they were pretty young things and the price of showing skin was hypothermia at the least and of course the paraders all in their colourful costumes. The Light Parade consisted of people with drums and colourful blinky lights wrapped around them and something that resembled a giant zombie, a big bird and an array of security guards and officials kicked off along London St at 1900 hours and lasted all of 10 minutes. The fireworks display was at 2000 hours which gave us time to walk down to the wharf for a better view of the display. Every now and then the setup crew would fire a rocket up for a test and this obviously drew the attention of the massive crowd. Have to give the festival credit for an amazing fireworks display and thoroughly enjoyed it. But now it was time head for the car and make our way back to Sumner.
We battled against the crowd trying to get to our vehicle, seem like everyone else in Lyttelton had parked at the opposite end of the town. Ten minutes later we reached our vehicle and now we could see it is going to be a massive task to get out of Lyttelton. We were parked facing up a hill and as far as we could see the traffic was backed up. We couldn’t do a-turn and had no choice but to go up to the top of the hill about 400 meters and performing a circus trapeze act with our Suzuki Jimny to turn around. It took 35 – 40 minutes to get 500 meters to the Lyttelton Tunnel. Well at least it forced me to show patience with the many morons that somehow have been granted permission to possess a motor vehicle. Saturday and it was time to load more gear into our Moho for the coming end of our house sit. A beautiful day ( 11 degrees and we consider it’s a beautiful day… man we’re desperate). Jude wanted to visit Lake Sumner some 105 kms away and I was keen as well but unfortunately we had been invited by a friend Neil Whitear to watch the Sumner Senior Rugby Team play their arch enemy and closest neighbours New Brighton whom they had beaten 64 – 7 in their last encounter… a fierce rivalry they call the battle of the sand pit. We got to the game just in time for kick off and we’re in full support of the Sumner boys. The game was like any good premier battle full of hard hits both in tackles and punches exchanged lol. At some stage Jude and I changed our support and started cheering on New Brighton… I’m not sure if it was the fact they had a man red carded or the fact New Brighton were a working class area as apposed to Sumner being a snobby Knobs area… or was it because Sumner we’re playing like crap, we did care but it seemed right to support the underdog… one of my life weaknesses I guess, but what ever the reason I don’t think the Sumner supporters would have been impressed with us. At halftime New Brighton led the game comfortably but lost a man to the red card for smacking a Sumner player at halftime. By the end of the game You would almost consider New Brighton cheated by having a player down for 40 min of the second half as they just smashed Sumner to bits winning the game 46 – 12 and I guess a just pay back for the previous encounter. The sun had dropped behind the hill and it got cold instantly so it was handy we had our Stoney Creek Prima-filled Jackets, beanie and gloves.
A walk along the Sumner Esplanade, at least the sun was still fighting to to emit the last light of the day along the foreshore esplanade Walk that created a spectacular view. With it being so cold you would think a hot drink would have been on the cards but no we had a gelato and sat at cave rock in the freezing cold eating a frozen gelato lol. At least we had a good walk home to warm up with.
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