Christchurch - Earthquake City

Well now, time for another blog from Dave!  Back by popular demand, or perhaps because this blog covers our visit to Christchurch, my home city for a decade.  Either way you'll get to see a little more of my and my mates in this one...  First up is my best friend Scotty all the way from when we went to high school together - he's the one playing the trombone in the picture below.  Some of you will remember him from being one of my two best men at my wedding (yep, two's better than one!).  One of the bands he plays with is Oval Office and they were up in Nelson performing at the annual Jazz Fest and were nothing short of awesome!

 

We arrived in Christchurch in the afternoon and after dinner with my best mate Merv (my other best man at my wedding) and his wife Noeline, Merv took us for a bit of a tour around the Red Zone.  This comprises the worst-hit areas from the earthquakes in Sept 2010 and Feb 2011 (see the website http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz for a chilling animation of the scale and number of shocks) which are uninhabitable now.  It was surreal to see the change to the landscape from what I had known...the pedestrian bridge below was twisted like licorice when both banks of the river were thrust closer together.

 

After so many earthquakes (over 20,000 since Sept 2010) remarkably few people have left the city of about 450,000 people and it has brought everyone much closer together, with an unusually strong sense of community.  People's creativity has come to light as they try to bring a little lightness to the devastation...below is a "library" consisting of an old fridge stuck on a now-empty corner lot in the city which is use as a book exchange, and it is always kept full.

Beside the "library", someone had made a recent addition of a mini golf hole using rubble (which is everywhere) and some Astroturf.  Perhaps someone had nicked off with the golf ball, because there was a golf ball-sized potato provided for use!  Needless to say, the boys thought this pretty cool, lol.

 In the centre of the city was the cathedral, and what remains can be seen below.  The rest collapsed during the first and second major quakes.  Nearly all of the centre city is fenced off as work crews continue the demolition of the city...entire blocks have already been completely removed.  Plans are still being finalized but essentially the city will be rebuilt from a relatively clean slate, something that normally only happens after a major war...so a lot of research is being undertaken into the most popular cities around the world and what makes them so great.

The CBD has been likened to Beirut in the 80's...and that is about right.  Obviously it was a complete mess at the time of the quakes but now there are so many empty, weed-filled lots where there were once landmarks...  Driving is a bit of a bugger because there was so much movement of the land that once-straight and flat roads are now very lumpy and bumpy.  Apparently the one benefit of this is all the boy-racers and petrol heads left the city LOL.  Everyone else has simply adjusted to driving a bit slower...one of the things you don't really think about when you think about what damage an earthquake does.  On the human side, child psychologists were in high demand as children's fears are hard to allay when the earthquakes and aftershocks just don't stop.

Anyone who knows Renee well, knows she isn't the world's biggest fan of dogs (ha!) so the boys were thrilled to find that my mate Merv had two fox terriers that were up for the challenge of playing with them!  I think the dogs were looking forward to a little rest when we left LOL.

Went out for a spot of mountain biking in the forest next to Merv's house (which has rather large cracks through it, sink holes in the back yard and a small lake out front whenever it rains due to the ground sinking!).  After a 12 year break from mountain biking my endurance turned out to be better than I had feared...thank goodness!  Brought back lots of great memories.

Sometimes when one builds near the edge of a cliff in order to get the best views, it doesn't work out so well.  The houses you see in the picture below are abandoned and the houses you don't see are the ones that fell to the bottom of the cliff to be buried under thousands of tons of rock...

At the beach in Christchurch, the same spot we took Jackson to when he was 18 months old...Xavier pictured here had been in the oven for 5 months at that stage LOL.  It was a popular day for surf lessons with dozens of people giving it a go, which was quite entertaining!  I can laugh because I've been there done that...

So how does one protect the roads around the base of the cliffs from further rock falls?  You take hundreds of shipping containers and make giant walls with them!  And then the local artists stretch giant canvasses across them and paint giant murals to brighten it up!  The new retail section in the Central Business District is also constructed from shipping containers that have been so massively decorated it is a tourist attraction in its own right (but we didn't make it there to shop - yet )...

After a couple of days it was time to drive back to Nelson, but stopped in to see my uncle and aunt (Arthur & Yvonne).  They live on a little hobby farm of 20 hectares and it had been ages since I had seen them so was great to catch up and for them to meet our boys!

Oops, back up a day...Merv had rounded up a few of our old buddies and put on a delicious bbq.  It was great to reminisce as well as find what people are up to more than a decade later!  

My "extended" family below with Merv & Noeline and Scotty, and of course the dogs Jack & Toby...how many pics have the boys with such big smiles!

Back on the road again to Nelson, this time via the inland route over the Southern Alps, through the scenic Lewis Pass.  Below is typical north Canterbury countryside...hills and dry grass.

As there had been a lot of rain the previous days, all the rivers were still in flood and had washed away sections of the highway...I think Renee was trying to snap one of them.  Happily for us, at least one lane was now open at all of the washouts.  Unhappily for my sister and family a few days previous, they were forced to backtrack and do a massive detour (there are not many main roads in NZ outside of the cities) due to the highway being closed.

Stopped at the start to the St. James Walkway...a really nice 4-5 day hike through the mountains that I had done with my family when I was much, much younger LOL.  We settled for a short walk around a little lake there.  Actually, the boys ran it...Jackson running it twice just because he loves running!  This type of area definitely feels like home to me with the mountains and beech forests :-)

Yep, this is the main highway through the mountains...lots and lots of green!

One of the billion or so waterfalls in NZ..only 5m (15ft) high but it is normally a much gentler sight with crystal clear water.  However a flood does make things much more dramatic with raging water, tree trunks and a big whirlpool reminiscent of Niagara...

This time Renee was able to capture a washout...with my side of the highway (left) being somewhere in the river now LOL.

Yep, more hills and mountains...Renee is loving the whole mountain-sea thing :-)

And always birdlife...in this case some more weka came to check us out when we stopped at a lookout spot.  They look a bit like chickens really. 

Time for another family self-portraitLOL

So if anyone knows Grandpa Al (Renee's Dad), they know that he likes the shoes at the door to be neat and will make sure they are always kept that way...turns out that maybe Xavier has the same gene!  After we had unloaded our gear from the van, Xavier disappeared for a few minutes and when I went to find him (it was a little too quiet...) he was very pleased with himself for having straightened up all the shoes lol.  Yeah, we don't have a closet at the front door, but who needs one when you have a Xavier?  

Wildlife Cruising South Island

 We scooped up a half-price deal on a Nature Cruise & Walk departing from Picton, before Christmas and found a date that would work for us as we traveled down to Christchurch.  We didn't really tell the boys until we got there what would happen as I didn't want them to get too worked up about seeing wildlife because you never know what you will or won't find on a certain day!  Once again, the weather cooperated for us and we had a beautifully warm, sunny afternoon out on the water.

 

 

 
It was a smaller boat with about 20 passengers and 2 crew, so the boys lucked out and got a chance to sit with the Captain!  We saw the salmon jumping in the salmon farm and some lazy fur seals hanging out waiting for their chance at dinner and we even saw a pair of little blue penguins swimming in the water (not fast enough with the camera for that one, but they didn't appear to be going around in circles!  LOL)  Truly though, we were in search of Hector's dolphins . . . and we found them!
 
 

There were about 6 or 7 of them that came to check out our boat and have a little play.  Short wee things, they have quite a bit of white on them and little dorsal fins that look like Mickey Mouse ears sticking out of the water!    It was great as we just sat on the bow of the boat and watched them swim around us for about 10 minutes. 

We also got off the boat for an hour long walk on a bird sanctuary island that is pest-free and run by the department of conservation.  There's a great look out tower at the top where just over Jack's hat you should be able to see the North Island on a clear day . . . doesn't really come through on the photo, but this is very nearly the top of the south island at the edge of the Queen Charlotte Sound, called Motuara Island.     We saw some:
         South Island Robin      3 Saddlebacks in the same tree (almost unheard of, as they are quite rare!
Some shags . . . and one solitary King Shag, apparently there are only around 200 of them in the world and 70% of them live in this one little area of the sounds, but they are quite shy and stay well away from people.  We had one bird watcher on the cruise and he was quite thrilled by this sighting and jotted notes in his book (seriously!). 

It was a great day!  We camped for the night in a Department of Conservation campsite again and then headed down toward Christchurch via Kaikoura the next morning, for  - you guessed it - more wildlife! 

 First you pass through this kind of dry, hilly area south of Blenheim that is mostly farming area, although there are some spectacular vineyards in the valleys. 

Then you come across the salt factory . . . pretty cool to see how they allow evaporation to take the water out of the salt water in the ponds.  (That reminds me that we promised the boys we'd try it ourselves at home  . . . hmmm)

Then the road heads back to the coast and the scenery changes again, become more dramatic as you get closer to Kaikoura.  The road follows the coast for quite a bit of time and you are sandwiched between the mountain ranges on your right and the sea on your left.  And there's a train track that goes between the road and the mountains with a series of tunnels as well.  

OK, we spotted wildlife again!   Can you??   New Zealand fur seals in all of their glory.  Moms with their new pups (only born in Dec. / Jan.)  only a stone's throw from the shore (not that we let the boys throw stones here!!)  This is the Ohau seal colony and the best seal viewing I've ever had.  We watched them sunbathe on the rocks, stretch, climb up and out of the water, swim around and on and on, the boys were fascinated, and so were their parents!  

Kaikoura is also a great place for whale watching - either by sea or by air . . . but no half price deals at the moment, so it was a no-go for the four of us (Kids can cost you a lot of money!) this time around.  Maybe later in the year.  

Right, so we carried on with our journey heading down to the Canterbury plains which looks a lot more like this . . . .  if you can call sheep "wildlife" that concludes this blog!