Journey to Christchurch

Early start today and after a Christmas call to my beautiful wife I woke Col to leap into a cab for the ferry to Picton. My love of boats was satisfied greatly by the trip but wow what amazing scenery. Picton bay is just stunning and on such a clear day we could see it all (refer to photos)

Picton itself was a buzzy place full of people enjoying the sunshine. We saw a sign for a walk up a hill to see a view of the harbour and decided to walk that. On our return we realised that Picton had loads of enticing looking chip shops but we had wasted our time on the hill and now had no time for lunch before the train. Must prioritise. Life is tough on holidays!

The train journey to Christchurch was... you guessed it full of amazing scenery. You would imagine at this point I would be getting scenery fatigue but each new place brings different types of amazing scenery and it really is so so awesome. The train went along the Pacific coastline so there were crashing wave beaches to the left with huge mountain stretches to the right!
The were also cool salt lakes that make 40/% of New Zealand's salt and some of them were bright pink because of some bacteria that live in them.

The guy doing the commentary was hilarious with very dry humour that had us laughing all the way e.g. as we went into Christchurch some kids threw rocks at the carriages and the comment over the loud speaker was just "Any passengers carrying AK47s are now welcome on the open viewing deck."

We arrived in Christchurch and me and Col decided to search for somewhere to eat. We were surprised and stunned to find that the place was like something from 28 Days Later in that there were no cars or people anywhere and everything including most of the streets where fenced off! I knew that we were in the red zone where the earthquake was worse but I thought it would just be a city centre with a few buildings cordoned off but the rest of the city back to normal. I was wrong. Nearly a year later a good few of the streets and buildings in the centre are completely closed off with fencing. Rubble lies everwhere. As you can see in one picture the steeple of a cathedral lay on the road beside it! Sobering.

When Mairead arrived we finally found a restaurant out of town and a drink. Apparently Christchurch's population has dropped dramatically as people have decided to live elsewhere and I must say I don't blame them. Fascinating place though.

Just found out there was a mini earthquake (3.3) at 1.30 in the morning but I slept through it as I am so used to Col's snoring!