Lunch at Murphy’s is as advertised – excellent!
Fresh fish, local, BBQ’d right out front on a flat top grill – can’t do better than this! We order the Gurnerd, which is a local fish that is very popular here. It’s awesome – light and sweet and flaky! And the way it’s prepared on the grill with minimal spices, a little lemon and some mayo on the bread. Yummy!
We head down the pier and eat our sandwich on a park bench over looking the water. How good does that look? Makes for a lovely picnic!
Now that we’re nourished, we set off toward the French side of town. It’s a rather grueling walk down the harborside promenade. While we’ve been out on the boat with the refreshing harbor breeze, it’s warmed up quite a bit in town and there’s no breeze – but there’s 100% sun. So it’s a little like baking ourselves as we walk the 10 minutes to the other side of town. And while we tell ourselves we need to do this to see all the town, well, we’re wilted by the time we get to the French side!
Our oasis, though, turns out to be Ma Maison, a lovely little restaurant on the beach and French harbor. There we have beer and wine….need to rehydrate now! And cool off a bit before heading back to the English side for our afternoon walk.
As we head back, we see more evidence of earthquake damage at the Banks Peninsula War Memorial, where 3 of the top ornaments have fallen off. They actually came down in the 2010 earthquake which was larger than the 2011 one! Wow!
Back on the English side of town, we head to the Garden of Tane where there are paths through the forest – and where we think we can cool off a bit since we’ll be in the shade. We have a map and an explanation of the Garden, but even the map calls the paths a “maze” and says it is confusing even with the map! We pick a random path and just hope we can find our way out! We’ve got 3 hours before the last tender, so we think we’ll be ok! LOL.
It is refreshing in the forest, and we wander a bit, heading uphill (working off our fish sandwich) to an overlook with great vistas.
We end up finding our way out of the gardens quite near the lighthouse. So we hike up to see this original structure that used to be out on a point near the ocean, but that has been moved inland to protect it from something- I think falling in the ocean from all the earthquakes.
We wander back along the water, basking in the sunshine (well, more like baking in the sunshine), enjoying the sights and sounds of this little village.
So glad we got to come here! Not someplace we’d ever see if we weren’t on the ship. Fun day in Akaroa.
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