After being permanently scarred by ‘the cucumber incident’, our first stop in New Zealand was the largest city on the South Island, Christchurch.  A small city which has suffered more than its fair share of tragedy over the past few years, with a series of earthquakes in 2010/2011 resulting in 80-90% of the central city area being destroyed, followed up by the terrible mass shooting in March this year.  We only spent a couple of days here but it was educational, sobering and somewhat uplifting.    

Day 37 – Moving on to Christchurch – the cucumber incident

We were up at 5.30 and made use of the free tram to take us to the Skybus terminal which goes to the airport.  The kids travel free on this so it was pretty reasonable and much cheaper than getting a taxi. 

Our airport check in was pretty smooth this time (apart from some last minute scrummaging to find the flight ticket email to prove we would be leaving New Zealand).  We had plenty of time to grab a breakfast of croissants and granola before boarding.  We travel another three hours into the future on this flight so although we land at 3pm, it will only be midday for us… at least bedtime will come sooner for the kids after their early rise!

The flight was straightforward and on time.  The queues through passport control were pretty lengthy, and then we had to clear customs.  Being from the UK we had no idea what to expect, Australia with the sniffer dog had been an introduction to keeping islands free of unexpected vermin, but this was something else!  There were some signs about some foods not being allowed, specifically pig and honey products and we’d filled in a form stating whether we were bringing in any foods, meats, wood, hiking gear etc into the country.  We’d filled it in honestly, to the best of our memory anyway, and gave up our honey after queueing through. 

We’d repacked the bags that morning, but some things had of course been in the bags for a few days as we hadn’t fully unpacked for a two night stay.  We also hadn’t focused much on food as we’ve never been anywhere that has cared what food we bring in…  big mistake.  Turns out we’d forgotten that there was a cucumber packed the day before with our sandwiches which we hadn’t gotten around to eating still in the bottom of one bag.  Which was annoying for two reasons, firstly, the kids were hungry so if we’d known it was there we’d have fed it to them.  Secondly, we hadn’t declared it so when they picked it up on the x ray scanners (another queue at the end when you think you’re done) we were in big trouble!

Firstly they wanted to know who owned the bag.  Chris took the rap.  Then he was escorted away for about 15 minutes whilst the kids and I were sent through to wait for him on the other side… he emerged with a $400 (£200) fine!!  For a cucumber!  Wasting money physically pains me so I by the time we finally emerged from the airport I was pretty grumpy (Chris thought it was pretty funny though!)…  Not the best start to New Zealand. 

When we headed out to get on the bus and they said that it was cash only so we’d have to get cash out and wait for the next one we were even more annoyed!  Not only that but the bus ticket price was a lot more than Rome2Rio (the site we used to estimate travel costs) had suggested.  Stupid New Zealand. 

Things got better on the next bus when, after getting cash out and telling the driver our cucumber and bus story, he offered to take us into town for free 😊.  His colleague also helped us find our connecting bus at the interchange.  Perhaps it’s not going to be so bad here after all… 

We had planned to check into our house and then walk back into Christchurch and see some of the sights, but by now it was nearly 6pm – it had taken us nearly two hours to get out of the airport!  So, feeling pretty angry with salad and any other green healthy items, we grabbed some beans and bread from the little corner shop for a comforting beans on toast dinner and got an early night. 

What a wasted day for a three hour flight.  Still, I expect that we will be laughing about the cucumber incident soon and it’ll be a good story.  Not sure I’ll be able to buy one without cursing it under my breath though!

Day 38 – Learning about earthquakes in Christchurch

With only one day now to see everything that Christchurch had to offer we had decided to get up early.  Which of course failed as 8am in NZ time was 5am in the Aussie time that we were used to so we didn’t get up till nearly 9!  Our plans were extra confounded by the fact that it was raining.  Hard.  Nevermind, the weather man said it’d stop by midday…

After a speedy breakfast we headed out about 11 for the couple of km walk into town.  We’d noticed on the bus journey through town the day before that there was no obvious town centre, and certainly very few high rises in stark contrast to Melbourne.  There are also a lot of empty spaces,  buildings which are sectioned off or held up by supports and lots of construction work. 

We knew that there had been some major earthquakes in Christchurch in 2010 and 2011, but that was over 8 years ago, so we hadn’t expected there to still be so much damage and for the effects to still be so obvious in a wealthy country like this.  What we hadn’t realised was that 80% of the city centre was flattened or damaged beyond repair!  But that’s part of the reason we wanted to travel, to get out of our sheltered little bubble where so much is assumed, and see how things really are.  What are the concerns of the people in other countries, rather than just our tiny island?

So our first stop on the way into town was the ‘Cardboard Cathedral’.  We paid a donation to get a tour around which was very useful, our tour guide explained how and why the cathedral was built out of cardboard (and shipping containers) and did some earthquake drills with the kids to make sure we were all prepared if another one struck. 

When the earthquake hit, the Cathedral was badly damaged and unusable, and many of the other churches also fell so there was no where to go for the community.  This building was constructed with the help of a UN architect to be able to be built quickly and (relatively) cheaply from sustainable, easy to source materials. 

It was built within a couple of years, from inception to opening, which to us sounded a lot, but when we consider that the Town Hall was only reopened this year it was a lot quicker!  It was very interesting to see the use of cardboard and shipping containers in a building like this.  We were also grateful for the shelter from the downpour outside…

Our next stop in a break in the rain was the memorial at the back of the cathedral site.  There were 158 deaths in the earthquake of 2011, and 115 occurred when one single building fell down with a class of English language students inside.  On the site where that building once stood, 158 chairs have been placed out, all painted white, each one different in style or size to represent a person who lost their life – a car seat for the 3 month old for example, and a high chair for the 8 month old.  That the chairs differed for the people made it all the more real.  The rain added to the somber feel here and was quite fitting. 

I needed a book of the birds in New Zealand (as I’m ticking them off in books in true twitcher style) so we’d included a stop at Scorpio Books on route to the museums.  As I walked into the book shop and was hit with that smell of new book and ink I realised that it has been a while since I stepped into a proper book shop.  I’d missed it.  It was also the first time the kids had been in a proper book shop we realised with shame.  Not good at all! 

We’d spent a lot longer in the Cathedral on the tour than we’d planned to so it was midday by this point and we’d never make it around a museum, so lunchtime was called.  The kids wanted a burger, and after the success of their choice in Melbourne we agreed.  We tried a place called the Riverside Market (which had only been open 3 days) but it was super busy, and most of the options were from SE Asia – we’re trying not to eat too much of that now as we’ll be there soon!

Instead we searched for cheap burger places and (refusing to eat at Wendy’s) headed to Burgerfuel – a NZ chain.  Again, we had to thank the kids for the idea.  Much better than your standard fast food burger joint, it’s cooked fresh, uses healthier ingredients like a wholemeal bun, has lots of salad, tasted amazing (Chris and Aiden said it was the best burger they’d ever had and my chicken burger cannot even be compared to the McDonald’s one as they’re on such a different level!) and they seem to be trying to be sustainable too.  All for not much more than a Wendy’s.  We will certainly be looking these guys up in other towns around NZ! 

Finally time to get into the detail at Quake City, Christchurch’s museum dedicated to the quakes of 2010 and 2011.  It’s pretty pricey for what you get, but there’s a lot of information about liquefaction and why it was such a big problem for Christchurch.  They also have a lot of photo’s, footage from the time and first person accounts which really help to bring home the scale of the destruction and devastation. 

Around 7,000 people were injured and some people went weeks without electricity and months without a toilet.  They were building long drops in their back gardens and queuing for water at trucks.  Living here requires a lot of resilience.  The people of Christchurch have a great attitude towards it all though as they know another earthquake will come.  I guess you have to be positive about it or leave.

From here we moved a few streets over to the Canterbury Museum (free 😊) where there is a special exhibition about the Arctic which was very interesting and really well designed for the kids – it kept their attention well.  We particularly enjoyed their quiz stations where four of you can go head to head and answer questions.  I thought they’d be really easy for adults, but actually they were pretty hard multiple choice questions about diseases spreading between populations and things like that! 

There is also a permanent Antarctica exhibition which Chris and I found very interesting but was not well laid out for children.  We were telling them the story of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole as we read it and learning as we went.  We found it pretty amazing that before discovering Antarctica they were pretty sure there was another land mass down there (there had to be to balance out all the land up North…) and were convinced that it would be some sort of tropical paradise.  As Cook’s ship got further and further south that idea died, even though he didn’t actually find land.  

We finished in the stuffed bird room, which gave Aiden and I a chance to swot up on the birds of New Zealand, including the Kiwi, before being kicked out as it closed at 5.30.  As it had finally stopped raining and was almost sunny we wandered into the botanical gardens next door which were very pleasant and had some very tame ducklings who were feeling photogenic, before heading over into Hagley Park and then to the river.

The sun was setting fast and a very cold wind was brewing so we decided to take the quickest route home rather than meander down the Avon.  On the way back we passed the old Cathedral which was replaced by the cardboard one.  It’s going to be years before this structure will be useable again.  

Christchurch have tried to turn many of the vacant lots following building removal into useful spaces, and we found this one park which was set up so you can try the new sport ‘Slacklining’.  Effectively tight rope walking on a wider strip.  Not easy!

We were most the way back when we could see a massive grey cloud coming in and the hills disappeared from sight, which could only mean one thing – a downpour.  We picked up the pace but didn’t make it back before it started hailing!  Luckily we passed a little corner shop and hid in there choosing our dinner before venturing out for the last few hundred metres back.  Not too wet. 

Day 39 – International Antarctic Centre

As we were checking out and then heading back to the airport today to pick up the RV/campervan (yay!) we decided to try out the International Antarctic Centre as it’s right next to the airport and has a free shuttle bus there which goes from outside the Canterbury Museum (and somewhat makes up for the extortionate entry price).  That was a 2.5km walk from the house, but it was a gloriously sunny morning so we walked it, bags and all. 

Arriving nearly half an hour before the next shuttle bus we stowed our bags in the museum and explored a couple more exhibits that we’d missed the day before, including the Living Canterbury one which was all about their environment, waste, recycling etc in the area.  It was a super interesting exhibit, but there was no time to finish it as we couldn’t afford to miss the shuttle though as they only go one every hour!

We boarded our bus and were whisked out to the airport and Antarctic Centre.  As Christchurch is the nearest major town/city to Antarctica at a tiny 5 hours to fly there, this is actually the site of a lot of Antarctic research and many expeditions start and end here.  In the Centre we stowed our bags in a locker (rather cramming it in to avoid paying for two), and then got straight into the penguin feeding. 

They have Little Blue Penguins and White-flippered Penguins, both of which are equally tiny.  The birds here are all rescues and many are quite messed up with brain damage etc from injuries.  There’s one who is afraid of the water (!) and another who seems to be a schizophrenic.  Oh dear. 

There are some informative exhibits here about Antarctica, particularly the research that goes on here, a 4D cinema with a couple of films and a big cinema screen showing footage of Antarctica.  The main attractions here are the Hagglund ride and the snow storm room.  These are real Hagglunds which have been to Antarctica and then retired.  Whilst you can’t drive around on snow, you do get piled into one, told to hang on and taken around a course of tyres and wooden obstacles, including super steep hills and a 1.5m crevasse, all of which the Hagglunds deal with with ease, whilst you get tossed around in the back.  Great fun and the kids loved it.  Definitely the highlight of the place.

The snow storm dome is a cold room that you can go in (armed with a thick coat), and then every now and then they imitate the Antarctic weather by making it go from -8 degrees with no wind to a wind with wind chill factor -21 degrees at 60 knots.  Wow that is cold – our noses were freezing off!  I now definitely have no urge to go to Antarctica.  Too cold!!

After a quick lunch here to warm us up (prices for eating out in NZ seem pretty reasonable…), and a battle with the locker to give us back our luggage, we headed to the RV centre around the corner…

Check out our RV fun down to Dunedin in the next post or head back to our previous adventures in and around Melbourne…