Christchurch – Quake City

The other week we drove up to Christchurch to meet up with our friends The Sutton family from our church in the UK.

We spent the Sunday with them and went to church, and then had a walk around the city – visiting some of their old haunts, as they lived in Christchurch about 8 years ago. The centre of Christchurch is a bit of a sad place post-earthquakes, but you can see the resilience of the city with the container city – shops and cafes made out of shipping containers, and the rebuild going ahead where it can where insurance claims allow. For example, a cardboard cathedral has been built, which is exactly as it says on the tin – a cardboard cathedral! We had a lovely day with the Suttons, and it was sad to leave them, but we were very grateful for the time we spent together. Thank you The Suttons! 🙂

The next day, Mrs. E, myself and The Spaniel went to Sumner beach, followed by Christchurch  Gondola in the Port Hills. Fortunately, the cloudy skies cleared up as we went up the gondola and the views were amazing. We could see from Lyttleton Harbour through to the Cantebury Plains and the Southern Alps.

Christchurch was good to us that weekend, thank  you

I think the pictures speak for themselves…

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Journey South Part 2: Kaikoura to Lake Hawea

I’ve neglected the blog recently, life has been a little hectic since we moved down here to Lake Hawea, and I had a little bit of writer’s block. The good news is, I have been collecting photos and making notes and there are lots of posts to come!

The second part of road trip south took us from Kaikoura to Christchurch. We were on a tight schedule but a friend told us that Christchurch needed visitors after the earthquake, so we duly paid a visit. We were duly rewarded by a quaint, historic old city. Yes it is a bit of a mess, but you can still see historic old buildings, and you can almost feel the resilience of the Christchurch residents. After a fleeting visit to the Botanic gardens, and a walk around (we will be back Christchurch), we hoofed it across the Cantebury plains and over the hills and mountains to Twizel in the MacKenzie country. Twizel is high country farming land, and full of merino sheep from what we could see. From Twizel we drove to Lake Tekapo with it’s deep turquoise-colour water and the Church of the Good Shepherd, a little chapel on the lakeside.
Our final leg was to our new home in Lake Hawea . We had never visited Lake Hawea, so as we drove down the Lindis Pass we eagerly looked out for Wanaka and neighbouring Lake Hawea. I won’t give too much away, as I will be blogging about our new life here, but check out the very last photo of the pink sunset, which greeted us on our first evening.

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