South Island

 Our North Island adventure is over and we now begin a week on the South Island.

After a great night's sleep in Wellington, we enjoyed our first hotel breakfast of this holiday. To catch our flight to Christchurch, we just had to walk next door to the airport. Wellington Airport is a small airport but seriously cute. Like everything in this city, it made me feel really comfortable and at home.

Our flight to Christchurch was less than an hour and we arrived to beautiful sunshine. I may have made the first misstep of this trip in my choice of accommodation. We are staying in a very average motel which I chose because it had a shuttle bus to the railway station (which we will use in the morning to meet the Tranzalpine train). Thankfully, we are only here for one night and we need to be out of here by 7am.

This afternoon, we spent some time in the middle of Christchurch city. We jumped on the hop on, hop off tram to get a big picture view of the city. Christchurch is very pretty. As our guide told us, the city has a very English and very Anglican look about it. What we didn't know was that 90% of Christchurch city's buildings were destroyed or badly damaged in the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. 2010 was the bigger quake but 2011 did more damage because it was a shallower quake. We visited Quake City which is a mini museum that documents the quakes and the restoration efforts since then. You get the feeling that there is a huge sense of ownership and pride in the city from the citizens, which is understandable given that the people have watched their city be torn apart twice. The rebuilding is still going on with some buildings closed up and showing the signs of the damage. The magnificent Christchurch Cathedral (which the guide described as the heart of the city) won't reopen until 2027.

We will have another opportunity to explore Christchurch at the end of our holiday so there will be more to come later.