This morning we headed off early so that we could take a slight detour to fit in the Moeraki Boulders. "Boulder shaped rocks" one of my companions kindly pointed out. Sounds kind of boring but they really weren't. It was a pretty chilly morning, but the moody gloom of it all gave the scene something extra in my opinion. The sprawling chilli-pepper-like seaweed strewn amongst these confusingly round jet black rocks with grey waves crashing amongst them. I just don't understand how they got that round.
Sat in the cafe with the fire blazing and treating myself to a hot chocolate looking out at the water, once again I got that 'Scotland on crack' feeling. Not surprising there's a substantial Scottish community down here on the South Island.
Then we were off to Christchurch. Unsurprisingly, all I had heard of the city from people who'd been was how depressing it is since the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. Driving in through the outer suburbs and the small townships where the earthquake started, though, it didn't feel all that depressing... No noticeable rubble or any specific signs that there were anything wrong. Even as we got into the CBD, there were tower blocks, hospitals and homes - a normal city. Looking closer though, none of these buildings were occupied. Up in the hills huge mansions looked down but we were told they are all condemned, and it seemed much of the housing in the centre was the same.
On Cassell street, where the earthquakes did the most damage, we start to see rubble and building sites. The bridge of remembrance is blocked off with yellow tape, there's an eerie Starbucks and clothes shop left as it was when the quake struck. The buildings have papers taped to the outside to sepay they are fit for use but no one's there.
More positively, Cassell street is now home to a makeshift mall with shops and cafés made from brightly coloured containment boxes. There's a museum to learn more about the earthquakes and this is the first place I actually saw people that weren't tourists. Walking around we found a row of colonial-looking pastel houses with shops and tram lines, and on the buildings we keep coming across awesome artwork painted onto the bricks. Nicknamed the garden city, Christchurch is home to the largest park in the Southern Hemisphere amongst a number of others that have amazingly all been restored.
With only 4 million living in NZ, though, the income from taxes is just not big enough to properly rebuild this beautiful city. Instead they are starting from scratch and building a new city out in the suburbs - Lego town as auto calls it, all the houses new but exactly the same. A couple of streets north of Cassell street mall and the eeriness and sadness come flooding back at Cathedral Square. I remember watching the cathedral collapse on the news back home but seeing it up close, seeing the memorials around, the ground zero feeling is more overwhelming than I anticipated.
We then walked down to see the Cardboard Cathedral, a temporary prism-shaped building, not apparently made of cardboard... But moving to see a wedding going on inside. The memorial project where a chair for each of the victims of the earthquake, including baby chairs and wheelchairs, occupy a patch of grass behind the cathedral. What a fantastic way to get across the individuality of each person - I've never noticed the personalities in chairs before but this was very effectivd.
We only had an afternoon in Christchurch but even that was too much time to fill in this city that is, as horrible as it is to say, ghostly.
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