Arriving into NZ & Landing in Christchurch

We had a full day of traveling to leave Sydney and arrive into Christchurch, New Zealand. A bus from Bondi Beach to the nearest train station, two trains to Sydney airport, flight to Auckland and then another flight onto Christchurch - situated on the South Island of NZ. At this point, a special mention for Air Zealand - I have been on numerous flights with different airlines over the years, but Air Zealand comes up top. Nancy wanted to mention that the business lounge had a dedicated kids room, full of toys. While the flight itself was made easy due to very attentive staff who even provided an extra seat in business class for Sam to sleep on and the endless flow of champagne was a nice touch.

Anyway, back to our travels we arrived into Christchurch about 7pm local time and made our way to our motel room. Our bus driver gave us some of the local highlights and provided us with some of the recent history relating to the earthquakes Christchurch has suffered. The city has experienced over 10,000 earthquakes since 4th September 2010 with the largest (and most infamous) earthquake last February. This shake was very shallow but rated as a 6.3 magnitude directly under the city centre, which resulted in claiming 185 lives and caused serious damage to thousands of buildings. According to the local newspaper, Christchurch was hit by five significant after shocks between 7pm Wednesday and 6pm Thursday, this week! (Extra note... just as I finished this blog post we experienced an after shock for ourselves).

Today, we wanted to see the city for ourselves and so we walked around the nearby Hagley Park with a very English styled Botanic Gardens, including a rose garden, ducks and a playground for Sam. We then toured the local museum which had interesting exhibits relating to NZ dinosaurs, local Maori culture and expeditions to Antarctica. We then wandered to the city centre to find the earthquake damage zone - an area that has been cordoned to the public for health and safety risk from the damaged buildings (see photo). We did then see a set of shops that have been restarted in metal shipping containers as temporary accommodation. Our general view of Christchurch is that it was quiet, almost a ghost town, which I suppose is understandable given the circumstances. Next is the start of our NZ road trip, as we pick up a car and head to the Pancake Rocks and Glaciers....


P.S For Kris, note that Sam is wearing his Vancouver Canucks t-shirt proudly in one of the photos!