Day 18 – Thursday 26th December

Christchurch

True to fashion, things have been a little off plan of late. We were supposed to hit Christchurch tomorrow for our last night in the van before flying back to Auckland on Saturday afternoon. So firstly we are a day early – but this is to try and get us another day in Kaikoura tomorrow for attempt 2 at whale watching so that’s OK. The other thing was that a certain old friend moved out (or it back) here about 15 years ago. A roguish sort that you’d expect me to get on with called Martin Hayes. Unfortunately I let slip that we were in the country a couple of weeks ago and he promptly ensured he left it within 2 hrs of us landing in Auckland. Of course he claims this was all bad planning and that it was his 50^th birthday and was off to Colorado for the skiing but I’m not so sure. Martin and Lisa live in Christchurch. They had escaped so that was our free pitch plan out of the window. 

The Cold Room - Snow time!

We therefore had to rely on the guide books. Firstly we checked in early – around noon at the camper site and then went off to the airport to visit the “International Antarctic Centre”. It is from Christchurch that the USA, NZ and Italy (but only in the summer) send out their teams to the Antarctic. I expect the UK utilises one of the other colonies – Andrea? It is also bang next door to where we need to drop off the camper on Saturday so that was an unpleasant reminder that time is running out. It has a visitor centre type attraction – it had 4D Antarctic cinema = 3D + water squirting at you at times, a walk through museum of Antarctic exploration, more penguins and a whole exhibit in real -10C temperatures with and added wind storm every 20 minutes. So we got to play in the snow on Boxing Day in the Southern hemisphere. It also had some all-terrain amphibious cat vehicles used in Antarctica that they took you for rides up, down, around in and floating across water. The kids did that twice. Sarah and I did it just the once thank you very much.

This afternoon we took a taxi and then rode the vintage tram through the city centre and then had a look around. You will remember the news of the earth quake some three years ago. But do you remember there were actually two events? The second killed 175 people and has pretty much wiped out the whole city

Vintage tram on the re-opened section of track - "Cathedral junction"

centre. What makes it more strange is that the suburbs all seem fine – just the main centre of the city which seems to be recovering from a massive air raid. It shocked us all really.  The place is a bit of a ghost town. It was a sobering experience. They are doing their best to bounce back. A whole shopping mall has been created from shipping containers for instance – so good luck to them all. I think the programme done by James Nesbitt on New Zealand shown on Christmas day covers it all well I wonder if you saw it? Hopefully it is waiting for us on the Sky box!

So that’s our all too brief visit to Christchurch next time it will be just to catch the first plane North. Tomorrow we try Kaikoura – again!

What I learned today:

• The Italians have a team in Antarctica – but only in the summertime
• Christchurch has a lot of rebuilding to do. They will do it.