Christchurch

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Spent some time this morning reorganizing and packing up.  We drove into Christchurch to see what we could see in light of the earthquake damage.  The center of the city is basically closed off, with a fence all the way around the central downtown/cathedral square area.  They were letting about 300 people go in at time in a fenced off walkway to see the damage.  The cathedral is heavily damaged as are most of the buildings in the area.  We have read it may take 20 years to fully rebuild the city.  They are still suffering earthquakes in the area, as I just read they had a 5.8 tremor just a few days ago.  There are construction cranes everywhere. 

We dumped our wastewater, filled up the water tank, filled up the campervan with diesel, before driving to Wilderness Vans to turn in our campervan.  A very humorous and roly-poly Brit who emigrated 40 years ago drove us to our last nights stay, a motel a few km from the airport.  Mervin had quite a life, with multiple job losses, army stints, treatments for alcoholism (been sober for quite a while now), was raised in Kenya, has lived all over the world in his early years, and was a great joke teller.  A very interesting man to meet as we wrapped up our trip to NZ.

Here are a few pics from Christchurch.

 Donna inside the camper van

 Mt. Doom from the air the next morning on our flight from Christchurch to Auckland

Mt. Doom from the air the next morning on our flight from Christchurch to Auckland