Christchurch - the little city trying to rebuild

We weren't sure where to place Christchurch in the blog chronologically.  We actually visited twice, at the beginning and end of our South Island trip. 

After our North Island trip, Jen, her parents, Lauryn and Lindsay flew down to Christchurch from Wellington while Pete, his parents and Kendra drove the family van and took the Cook Strait Interislander Ferry to Picton and then drove down along the coast to meet up with them. 

Flying in NZ is a really nice experience because the airports are so small, the people friendly and the flights so short.  There wasn’t even security in the Wellington airport (harkening back to the 20th century in the states). The airport also has some very cool huge sculptures of LOTR figures hanging from the ceiling - Gollum fishing, Gandalf on the back of a giant flying eagle and our favorite was a full scale Smaug head emerging from the wall.  These were donated by WETA workshop, the company that did all the scale figures for LOTR movies.

On arrival to Christchurch, Jen and group picked up a  rental car and headed over to Larry and Anne’s place. Larry is a friend of Jen’s friend Kat. He is American, but has been living in Christchurch since 2012  with his wife and 3 kids and they love it there.  They used to live in Washington DC so have really enjoyed the smaller city of CC, with is beautiful gardens, walkways and easy accessibility. Larry told us he likes the informal and laid back work ethic of kiwis and does not miss the killer pace of working in the US.  These guys do look relaxed, don't they?

We all walked over to the farmers market which is situated in a beautiful local garden along the Avon River.  There is an historic house in the middle of the garden and market, providing a gorgeous backdrop to the market.  We ate some delicious smoothies and calzones, then walked back to Larry’s house, where of course we were offered more food.  It is typical Kiwi hospitality to spontaneously invite people into your home and feed them!  

After getting some good advice from Anne we set out to explore CC via car.  You can go on an official “rebuild” tour that features the recovery of the city from the earthquake.  n September 2010 there was a 7.1 quake just outside the city, and although there was extensive damage to buildings, no lives were lost.  Unfortunately, in February 2011 there was another strong quake, this time hitting directly under the city center along a fault line that no one knew existed.  This caused tremendous damage and 184 lives were lost - half of them when a large business building collapsed.  Sadly, this building had been assessed to be safe after the September earthquake, although no one would have anticipated another quake occurring directly underneath it.

It is pretty amazing to see how the city is rebounding from the destruction in a fun, funky and vibrant way.  An incredible amount of street art has popped up all over buildings and walls, and the local YMCA has an exhibit of street art-sculptures, graffiti and such, in its basement.  Here are some of our favorites which take up whole city blocks (sorry one of these is very PG-13, but also very cool.) 

We drove around the city Cathedral, which was so heavily damaged that its entire east wall collapsed and it is still cordoned off.  The city has built a lovely living wall of plants and colorful flowers, as well as several temporary exhibits, right next to the cathedral.  

Another example of the fun is the plastic striped "sheep" that decorate curbs instead of plain old boring orange cones.  It took all three of us to herd this particular sheep : )

A temporary replacement for the cathedral has been built nearby called the “cardboard’ cathedral.  Literally, it is built out of cardboard and only supposed to last about 50 years at the most.  The walls are made of those large sono tubes that are used to pour cement and the roof is made of plastic.  All the inside, including the pews, are cardboard as well.  Of course, the windows are glass and some artistic stained glass decorates the front of the building. Pretty cool.

Right behind the church is a temporary exhibit to honor the lives that were lost in the quake.  (The Oklahoma bombing site has a similar memorial to its' victims.)  We found it quite compelling and poignant.  The artist encouraged you to sit in a chair and contemplate the life the ended that day.  Particularly sad were the highchairs and baby seats that represented young lives cut short in the disaster.  

After meandering through the city (and Jen was quite proud of herself that despite driving a rental car on the left hand side of a foreign city she did not get lost or go the wrong way down a one way street) they drove to our holiday park and met up with Peter, his parents, and Kendra as they arrived from their 5 hour drive down from Picton.  

As a postscript of sorts, the following week, we spent one final night in Christchurch and had the one last morning after that to do what just part of the gang had done the week prior, and we took lots of the pictures featured above.  Pete even made things a little more interesting on his drive around town when we most certainly did go the wrong way down a one way street - whoops!  At any rate, after that particular bit of excitement, I think Anne, Joe, Jon and Susan were ready for the safety of the airport and their return flight to LA...so we said our sad goodbyes.  And thus concluded the BIG Jeans/Bloomer New Zealand trip of a lifetime!  Many thanks to them all for making the long trip and for joining us!

Over the following weeks we hope to finish more posts detailing our subsequent trip around other parts of the South Island, as well as get caught up with our goings-ons since then.