Banks Peninsula and Onuku Farm Hostel

View of Akaroa Bay from a hill at Onuku Farm.
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From Christchurch, we made our way out to the Banks Peninsula and found the Onuku Farm Hostel (www.onukufarm.co.nz), which easily became our favourite stay in New Zealand.  Run by a quick-witted Kiwi, Steve, and his German partner, Anja, this farm hostel is located on a working sheep farm up in the hills on a peninsula that juts out into the Pacific Ocean.  The Akaroa Bay cuts into the landscape here and makes for some striking scenery while hiking through these hills.

A sheep and a palm tree.
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Besides having a cozy farmhouse building with double rooms and a couple of dorms, there is also a campsite where you can pitch a tent or stay in a "Stargazer", a little wooden hut with plexiglass for roofing material above your head.  As it was still a little early in the season (i.e. cold) we stayed in the farmhouse with the roaring wood fire.

Onuku was where we experienced our first-ever earthquake.  It was sometime between 5 and 6 AM, and I awoke to the whole room shaking.  In my state of half-sleep, I rationalized that it must be a stampede of cattle--but then I remembered that there were no cattle on the farm, only sheep, so it must have been a sheep stampede.  But no, that doesn't make sense because sheep aren't that big, so then I thought that maybe a flock of birds was landing on the roof, and that was enough to satisfy my half-asleep brain to let me drift off again.  It only lasted a few seconds, and didn't even knock anything over (apparently it was only a 4.0 on the ol' Richter), but made for interesting breakfast conversation that morning.

At Look Out point. (It was quite a sheer drop from that rock.)
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Onuku was also where I confirmed, without a doubt, that I have an intolerance to certain shellfish.  There have been suspicions before, but with this experience under my belt I will never eat another mussel so long as I live.  On the way back from one of our many day-long hikes in the area, we stopped at a beach during low-tide and collected a bag full of fresh mussels.  This is apparently a common and quite safe thing to do, so we figured we'd give it a try.  I had only two of them, just to see if I could stomach that quantity, and Katherine and a big German guy that was staying at Onuku each had a heaping plateful.  But, like clockwork, three hours after eating them I began feeling queasy, and subsequently lost everything I ate that night (which had included a nice lamb steak, dammit!).  Katherine and the big German very easily digested their mussel portions, and managed to enjoy the rest of their meal only once.

A view from Look Out point.
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After four nights, much as it pained us, we finally had to leave the peace and tranquility of Onuku.  When we make it back to NZ, the Banks Peninsula is definitely a destination of choice.