To back up a bit, in Sept 2010, Christchurch was hit with a
7.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked the city but didn’t do too much
damage. Then, in Feb the following year,
another smaller but shallower, and therefore more destructive, earthquake hit,
leaving almost all of downtown inhabitable.
You’d have thought, given that it’s been almost two years, that they’d
at least have the condemned buildings torn down. Well that’s what we thought anyway, but boy
were we wrong. According to the locals,
politics and red tape from insurance companies has hampered progress, but
regardless of who is at fault, the result is that downtown Christchurch still in
shambles with much of it an off-limits red zone. To be there was incredibly eerie; there were hardly
any people around, buildings stood in shambles for block after deserted block
and, in the red zone, the stop lights still blinked yellow despite the streets
being empty. We joked, only
half-heartedly, that we had to be in before dark ‘cause that was when the
zombies came out – it was seriously that spooky and I didn’t take any photos
worth posting because it just looked deserted and was depressing.
Christchurch is right on a fault line so more earthquakes
are inevitable and most business abandoned the city post-earthquake to set up
their operations in the suburbs, meaning downtown will probably never fully
recover. The first effort towards
rebuilding the city is ReStart, an urban shopping centre built entirely from
used shipping containers, at the edge of the red zone. It was nice to see a pop of color, and
people, in an otherwise bleak, deserted landscape.
Fortunately we only spent one night in Christchurch. The next day we set off in our Hippie Camper
(no I’m not joking, I'm going to be a changed woman after this trip!) for six days of exploring the South Island. Much to Alex’s disappointment I failed to
take a photo of our sad little camper, haha maybe sad isn’t the right word, it
did have purple flowers and butterflies on it.
Luckily for him (and sadly for the poor humiliated guy driving the
camper), while driving out of Melbourne a few weeks later, we saw the same camper
and Alex sped up so I could take a photo of it to share with you all.
After Christchurch we were headed to the Franz Joseph
Glacier on the other side of the island but to get there we first had to drive
through Arthur’s Pass. It was the most beautiful
drive through the mountains; there were the brightest white snow capped peaks
that I have ever seen and gorgeous scenery around every bend. Here are just a few of our photos so you can
see for yourself.
The Franz Joseph Glacier was cool but we couldn’t hike on it
without going on a guided tour. We
didn’t really have time for that so we just walked around the national park,
admiring the beauty.
From there we visited the Fox Glacier, a short drive away,
then continued driving south until we hit Haast Pass where we stopped at the
Blue Pools. The Blue Pools were amazing,
the water was an incredible blue and so clear you could see to the bottom and
the fish looked like they were suspended in mid-air.
Then we hit Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world
(a well deserved title). We walked into
town from our holiday park and went to Bob’s Peak to check out the views of the
city. You can get to the top via a short
five minute gondola ride, which I took one look at and said, ‘no way’ so Alex
was a trooper and hiked with me the arduous hour up the mountainside. The long walk was worth it once we got to the
top, in addition to the gorgeous views, they had a huge luge that you could
ride (which naturally we did more than once).
There was also hang gliding, bungee jumping and a variety of other bad
ideas that Alex was just getting brave enough to want to try when I decided it
was time to leave. Since I’d foiled his
other plans, Alex rented a bike to BMX down the mountain, RAD (his favorite bad
80s movie) style. Here are a few snaps
of him enjoying himself in Queensland.
Up next was Milford Sound, or so we thought, and the first
of several gut-wrenching disappointments New Zealand dished out. We drove three hours south of Queenstown to Te
Ano, where we stopped for the night so we could get up fresh the next day and
be at Milford Sound early, but while checking in we noticed the sign informing
us the road to Milford Sound was closed due to an avalanche. The lady at the desk tried to make us feel
better by letting us know that avalanches were ‘very unusual’ for this time of
year (gee, thanks for that consolation) and that it might reopen in the next
day or two. The following morning we
were up early and went to the visitor info center where the more informed lady
told us the road was going to be closed for a week but that we should visit the
‘even better’ Doubtful Sound instead.
Since we never went to Milford Sound I can’t say if Doubtful
Sound was better or not, but it sure was impressive. Much more remote than Milford, we had to take
a 45 minute boat ride across Lake Manipouri then another hour bus ride across a
mountain pass to Doubtful Sound. But it
was more than worth the trip, the Sound was massive (so big in fact that we
passed by a Norwegian cruise about an hour into our trip) and absolutely
pristine, another New Zealand natural wonder.
Besides the cruise ship we had Doubtful Sound mostly to ourselves,
making it that much more awe-inspiring.
In addition to the beautiful scenery, we also got to see the
rare, elusive, fijordland crested penguins and a resident colony of seals that
live on the rocky islands near the sea.
Sorry, I have to share this random side story… we stayed in
Manipouri the night before our Doubtful Sound cruise because it was closer than
Te Anu and we had to be up early for the trip.
Manipouri only had two caravan parks and both looked seedy but we
quickly realized after parking our campervan and paying our money that we’d
picked the creepier of the two. Upon our
arrival, the owner ran down from a locked upstairs room into ‘reception’
wearing a pair of white coveralls that a painter (or murderer) would wear not
to get his clothes dirty while working and awkwardly told us that his brother ‘collected
things’. I wasn’t sure what that meant
until I went outside and saw the row of Morris Minor (old British cars) and old
school VW Beatles, some of the windshields painted to look like eyes winking at
you ‘cause these cars clearly weren’t in any condition to be on the road. There were also several ‘cottages’, literally
tiny one room houses scattered along the property, each with its own
personality (one looked like a Swiss chalet, another like a house you’d see in
suburban America back in the 50s) that shared the same common areas as the
caravan parks. The common area was worth
noting too, there were Jaws posters and warnings about death from falling off
cliffs, along with a board of family photos from the 70s-ish with the one
brother always standing off on his own staring eerily into the camera, like the
kinda kid that killed local neighborhood pets.
The ultimate creep factor though, came when we noticed the girl mannequin
in the attic window with full make-up wearing a white nightie and a feather
boa. I seriously can’t believe we stayed
there, or that we made it out alive, but we did and it’s a cautionary tale I
will tell our kids one day when they want to travel!
Since I’m sharing random stories and observations, I want to
mention that throughout the west coast of the South Island all the bridges were
one lane give-way bridges. It was crazy,
they went to the trouble of building a bridge; why not just make it two lanes?!
Another South Island constant was Keas. Large green birds that look like parrots,
these little beggars are the pigeons of New Zealand and there are signs
everywhere not to feed them. But no one
listened to the signs, as we witnessed on numerous occasions, so the Keas were
out in full force everywhere we went and were happy to pose for photos, like
these.
Ok, back to our trip.
After Manipouri we drove to Dunedin (prounounced Done-Eden), on the east
coast expecting great things, but it was cold and rainy so we spent the entire
day driving and made our way back north to Mount Cook. In order to get to Mount Cook we had to drive
50kms along Lake Pukaki, which was another crystal clear, bluer than blue,
natural wonder. Neither Alex nor I had
ever seen water so clear and blue in a lake, rather than the ocean.
Mount Cook was awesome; it’s the highest peak on the South
Island and is surrounded by National Park with miles and miles of gorgeous hiking
trails. We hiked all day, seeing glacial
lakes framed by snow-capped peaks and rugged mountains slopes. It was one of the best days in New Zeland and
Alex and I both stopped to stare in awe as we took in the beauty all around us.
Heck, even our caravan park in Mount Cook had this stunning
view.
New Zealand has no shortage of lakes and Lake Tekapo was
next on our list. It’s another pretty
lake, seriously NZ is the most beautiful place I have ever been, but it is
famous for its night sky. The town has
an observatory at the top of its largest hill and the entire surrounding area
is a ‘black-out’ zone so no ambient light will ruin the stargazing. We ventured out, into the freezing cold,
around 10pm and went down to the lakefront to have a look and it was
incredible. I’m not into astronomy by
any means but there were so many more stars than I could have ever imagined and
you could even see the Milky Way! We
gaped as long as I could handle the cold (which truthfully wasn’t that long, a
half hour maybe) and, sadly I couldn’t get my camera to capture any of it, but
it will be a memory I never forget.
The South Island rocked and we could have spent a LOT more
time there but time was a luxury that we didn’t have so we left Lake Tekapo and
drove straight back to Christchurch to return the campervan and catch our
flight to the North Island, where more beauty, and a few disappointments,
awaited us!
I'll leave you with two final photos of the gorgeous South Island scenery from our drive.
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