Last day > Trip home

Girls helping pack for the last time.  It was a lot of work to stay in so many different places!

For our last morning, we decided to explore the Quake City museum that documented the impact of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes on Christchurch.  The city gets many earth tremors each year, but these two had epicenters very close to the city and were quite large on the richter scale. You can see what they did to one of the railway lines...

This is kind of random, but there were a lot of different artifacts with stories behind them.  These were discovered inside one of the walls of the cathedral when it was so heavily damaged.  At first they thought they were workmen's knee pads, but they were all different sizes.  Eventually they determined they were clapper covers for the tower bells so they would be muted.

This was part of the leaded stain glass windows that didn't survive at the cathedral.

Last view of Auckland from the airport.  We got to fly Air New Zealand and boy did we have more leg room than any American carrier I've been on!  Great service. 

Downtown Christchurch

After visiting the Canterbury museum, we walked through downtown Christchurch.  In 2011 there was a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that hit the city (the epicenter was just a few miles from the business district).  Its did significant damage and killed over 180 people.  One building that suffered a lot of damage was the Cathedral, seen below.  The front facade with rosette window collapsed into the square, and the bell tower and spire also collapsed.  They are in the process of restoring it, but it will take time and a lot of money.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see the extent of the damage to the stone work that is still intact. 

This is the surviving roof to the spire/bell tower.

A lot of buildings around the area were held up by these steel girder frames to prevent further collapse until they can be repaired.

This is the temporary home of the cathedral's congregation.  Its a very temporary building, made with giant rolls of cardboard (think paper towel rolls on steroids) that support the clear plastic awning material that covers the roof.  Its meant to be temporary to support the eventual return to the original building.  

I love to stroll in public spaces and see what people do in their down time.  This cafe space had bouncy balls seats that were very popular. 

We saw some fun window dressing for Christmas in Auckland at a department store.  This one was great too.  It was a convey belt that 'wrapped presents'.  The Elephant, bee and other gifts went in one side and came out the other wrapped (see below)

Memorial arch for WWI and WWII soldiers.

Public art - a shipping container with the letters cut into it.  

Canterbury Museum

We visited the Canterbury museum for several hours today.  It is a history of the region dating back to the Mesoic (?) era (post jurasic).  Lots of paleotology - bones of existent birds from the island;  anthropology - artifacts of life of the Maori and European settlers;  Antarctic exploration - artifacts and geologic/historic info;  agricultural info from the Christchurch area - its the breadbasket for the country; and lots of other interesting bits.  Well documented, interesting displays.  I learned that the aquifers around Christchurch are refilled from mountain runoff that is filtered through natural gravel beds.  (Unlike aquifers at home where the water is too deep to be replenished by runoff).  And the water is so well filtered, it does not need to be treated before going into the city water system. 

Kumara > Christchurch

It's been fun documenting the changing landscapes as we've driven from the North to the South Island and from the West coast to the East.  Its been remarkable how many differences there are in topography, plant life, etc.  I've readily taken more than 300 photos snapped from the passenger side of the car while moving at highway speed (100 kph) or slower around twisty, curvy roads.  After each ride I've culled them down to the ones that don't have light poles, signs, blurry cattle, etc to provide a small taste of what we've been seeing.  Its been fun, but this is the last leg to share...

Delaney knows I've been remarking (obsessively) about how beautiful the wild flowers are.  All along the west coast we saw lots of wild pink foxgloves.  As we crossed the mountains to the east, the pink suddenly became purple, and I don't know what these flowers actually are. Perhaps some kind of salvia?

Here are the foxgloves I've been admiring.  They were everywhere on the side of the roads.

Had to laugh at this photo that Delaney snapped.  David actually asked me to steer at one point as he took a photo that he wanted! lol! Fortunately this was on a straightaway without any traffic.  Not recommended to demo this stunt with your teenager watching you from the backseat.  Kids: do not try this at home. 

We started are day in Kumara with a low cloudy sky, but I was hopeful the clouds would lift enough that we could see just a bit of the southern alps since the glacier trip was a bust.

The clouds were pretty and slowly lifting as we climbed Arthurs pass.

Lots of hairpin turns and a number of small waterfalls.  This was actually a water chute built over the highway, apparently this was the easiest way to deal with all the water running off this slope.  Kind of cool.

View from an overlook above the water chute.

We crossed a really cool, high bridge that was next to a giant rock slide.  We didn't see too many of these major bridges, most were much more modest.  In fact most were one lane and required careful sharing / taking turns to navigate.

Our break in the middle of the drive was to hike to the falls at Arthurs Pass.  This apparently is a very popular hike because the parking lot was full and so was the trail.  Not my favorite hiking conditions, but it was good to get out to stretch our legs and enjoy the view.  

The walk started with a bridge over the river.  There were a lot of different trail heads here, ranging from 1 mile to more than 10 miles, with elevation gains of 300 ft to more than 2000 ft!  The hike to the falls was 1 mile and 300 ft gain.

The gain was ALL in stairs - 400 stairs to be exact (yes, we counted), one way!

The overlook at the falls was beautiful

The forest changed remarkably as we cleared the pass and started coming down the eastern slope.  Rather than the lush temperate rain forest, it became scrubier with some small pines.  Farther down the slope it was even more barren.  

Wide river valleys were very similar to those running off the western side of the slopes too.

You may have noticed the very grey skies in all these pics.  It turns out its not just cloudy weather, its smoke and ash from the wild fires in Australia, 1300 miles away to the west!  If you look on a satillite photo, you can see the darker grey colors where the smoke/ash is rising and being carried by the prevailing winds to the south island in NZ.

The yellow shrubs were also pretty, but I liked the pink foxgloves best.

We finally got a good view of the possums here that are such unwanted pests/predators.  (We had seen plenty as road kill, but no live ones).  They totally do not look like US possums.  They are brown, with long, lemur-like tails, and a bit cuter than our rat-like grey ones at home.  Apparently they are used for making scarves and sweaters, because I came home home with a very soft, lovely possum-merino wool scarf.

As we approached Christchurch, we passed through some really interesting hillsides with GIANT tumbled boulders in the midst of these scrub and grass covered hills.  They would have been fun to explore on a hike, but we didn't have time for a second hike on this day.

This last picture is just a few miles from Christchurch.  This is the agricultural heart of NZ.  Apparently they have a lot of problems with wind and soil erosion, so the hedge rows they've planted are huge.  We felt like we were in a giant maze with these pruned hedges on each side.  I would have liked to know how they actually trimmed them that high up.

Quirky little stop along the road

On our drive from Kumara to Christchurch, we passed through the historic town of Otira near Arthur's Pass.  We couldn't help but notice Gollum sitting on top of the local hotel.  We decided to pull in for a photo and ended up going into the coffee shop as well.  Boy was this a fun stop!

Gandalf and a dragon were in the parking lot.

And a huge collection of random antiques were inside.  These was outside the bathrooms.

This was inside the bathroom.

Did you know that toilet paper roll dispensers were patented in England in 1878??

The hotel / cafe had several sitting rooms for guests (closed to the public in the evening).  The closer you looked, the more interesting they became.  Jammed with antiques of all kinds.

I particularly liked this "vacuum cleaner" that operates with a bellows attached to the stick handle.

Parrot chandelier anyone?

Found this bit of cable fascinating.  The full length showed the layers of cable.  Wire wrapped in some kind of lining, wrapped by a third and then this external fourth layer.  1876?!  Cool.

The kids might be more keen to mow the lawn if this were an option.

This may be too small to read, but it tells about two guys who rode these OLD bikes over the pass while carrying their tents AND old photography equipment.  I can't even imagine.