christchurch: from quaint village to quake city

after our early morning flight to christchurch, we were greeted at the airport by rob (jamie's first cousin once removed) and his son lewis who was holding up a rather impressive home-made sign to make sure we knew they hadn't forgotten about us!

after the drive back to their house in the remote village of little river - about 45 minutes south-east of christchurch on the banks peninsula - we met helen (rob's wife) and rosemary (helen's mum that was also visiting from england). we dumped our bags and planned the next couple of days over a nice barbecue with the whole family. in the evening, rob and helen took us to a local pub called the hilltop to experience a typical kiwi night of friendly faces, local wines and live music. the view from outside the pub - halfway between little river and the beautiful town of akaroa - was spectacular.

the view tempted us so much that the following day we decided to explore akaroa in full. we drove with rob, helen and lewis to the town, which was originally founded by the french and as such has beautiful little houses and shops, and a heap of faux-french attractions, such as 'le mini golf'.

around akaroa harbour, jam was running out of superlatives to describe the landscapes. it was his favourite place so far. after the promise of seeing new zealand's exclusive 'hector' dolphins (or a free ride the next day!), we decided a catamaran trip from akaroa harbour was a necessity. sure enough, during the 2 hour ride, we saw plenty of the hector dolphins, which are the smallest species in the world at only roughly 1m long, and lots of fur seals too!

on our final day in christchurch, we took a wander around christchurch itself. the city is still absolutely devastated from the earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 with, what seemed to be, barely any buildings over two storeys still standing. we saw the pallet pavillion (a temporary space for gigs and performance with wooden pallets for seating) which remains open due to crowd funding and local demand, the art gallery and art centre (both closed and undergoing repairs), the canterbury museum, botanical gardens, re-start mall, the transitional "cardboard" cathedral and new regent street. overall, it was quite a unusual, upsetting and humbling experience walking through 'quake city' as it has come to be known. however we were really impressed with the creative ways that had been found to provide pop-up and temporary shops, restaurants and cafes while the city gets rebuilt from the ground up. for example the picture below was taken at the re-start shopping mall which is made of shipping containers.

and this is a picture of the pallet pavilion i described earlier.

on our way out of christchurch we popped into the international antartic centre which is near the airport (where we were flying to wellington). we watched the penguins getting fed and learned about how to survive in extremely cold temperatures.