New Zealand - Christchurch

If you aren't up to speed in your recent New Zealand history, Christchurch was hit by two rather damaging earthquakes in the last decade, in 2010 and 2011.  The whole town suffered significant damage, most notably to the city's beautiful stone cathedral.  When we first arrived here last Saturday the whole downtown area seemed completely dead.  Shops were closed, a few restaurants were opening for the evening, but there were hardly any people around!  Driving around the city center is a challenge because you can't go past a block without encountering a construction zone or building that is either condemned, being fixed, or an empty hole in the ground.

All of that being said, Christchurch is still a vibrant city with a population slightly larger than Anchorage and today there were definitely people about and you could tell that locals are working hard to bring things back to normal.

One of the great things about this place is that you can fill a whole day doing free activities - which is exactly what we accomplished!  We started at the botanic garden, which had some cool English style garden areas, a pretty rock garden, and a New Zealand section.  We had fun watching families of ducks with the teeny-tiniest-fluffiest ducklings!  They were so bold that when Hans and I stood still the babies ran around our feet and tugged our shoelaces while the adult ducks looked on very warily.  The magnolias were fading but the cherry trees and rhododendrons were in full bloom.

Kayaks on the Avon River

Our next stop was nearby Riccarton House, on land that was farmed in 1843 by Scottish pioneers, the Dean family.  The cottage is Canterbury's oldest surviving building.  The Victorian/Edwardian era house was also built by the Deans.  While the buildings were cool, our main reason for visiting was the bush grove, a plot of old growth kahikatea forest that is the only remaining section in the entire Cantibury Plain.  The grove is surrounded by an electrified predator-proof fence that one can only enter through a double gate.  You can open the inner gate only when the outer gate is closed and you have to push a button for entry.  It feels like you're entering Jurassic Park!  The grove was very peaceful and the local birdsong was fun to listen to.  We took our time through the grove even though it's supposed to be a 10-minute walk.  While the preserve has been protected for over a hundred years, the plants and trees need assistance with survival by dedicated horticulturalists.

Victoria Clock Tower

Our third stop gets props for my friend Amber for her mentioning of this site.  If not for her it would not have been on my radar.  Because the old stone cathedral downtown has been damaged to the point it needs to be either demolished or deconstructed, world-renown "emergency architect" Shigeru Ban designed a new "temporary" building that is made of literally cardboard, steel, wood, and polycarbon.  It looks like a giant kaleidoscope.  It serves the local Anglicans every day and on Sundays there are choral performances.

We had a pretty greasy cheese-bomb of a pizza for lunch, which we regretted later because we walked over to the Re:START Mall, a collection of shops and cafes built out of shipping containers that have been arranged to make a temporary mall until new and permanent premises are rebuilt.  Picking up on the theme yet?  Christchurch may have a long road to recovery still, but the people are determined to make the most of things as colorfully as possible.  Anyway...about lunch...the mall has awesome food trucks that would have served us better today.  Oh well.

We ended the day at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, a free collection of contemporary art that had some pretty cool exhibits.  I believe it reopened in around 2013 after the earthquakes.  My favorite was probably the exhibit for New Zealand photographer Fiona Pardington.  Some of her work included still life photographs that were so color saturated and sharp that they looked like 16th-century paintings.

Many downtown buildings are supported with steel beams like this

Get this: the landscape sculpture here is made from 0.5 mm mechanical pencil lead sticks!

For those who always need to know where the are in the art world :)

Here's the old stone cathedral.  The aftershocks killed the giant rose window in the front of the building and the bell tower eventually fell over.  Luckily, only one of the 13 bells was cracked and needed to be recast.  There are plans to build a temporary bell tower next to the Cardboard Cathedral so that the old bells can sound in the city again.

Tonight we don't feel much like dinner because of that pizza.  It's just as well because we have to save our bellies for the Kaikoura Seafest Tomorrow!