Well,  we just experienced our first earthquake.  Sitting here, watching TV on Christmas eve, the floor moved under us!  There was noise and shaking and whoa!  Yes, an earthquake.  Five minutes later it was showing up on the Christchurch quake map, as a magnitude 4 earthquake, centered about 5 miles away.  Hmmm, not so sure about this wonderful city.  Christchurch has literally had 11,000 (not a typo) earthquakes since 2010, which has made healing difficult for those that experienced the two big ones.  Well, it’s a different way to spend Christmas eve!

 

There is an earlier post about our ramblings around downtown Christchurch but the pictures I took that day all got lost.  Damn computers.  🙂  Anyway we were down there again and I took a whole bunch more pictures and I thought I would do a post so you all could see just what this city is dealing with.  The city was pretty much completely destroyed by the 2011 earth quake.

This is the Christchurch Cathedral before the 2011 earth quake.

This is what it looks like now.  The steeple is completely gone and the rest of it is very badly damaged.  The metal structure on the right is holding up what’s left.  You see a lot of this where they have braced up unique building facades to save them for when the building is rebuilt.

You see a lot of this too.  Tall, empty buildings being prepared to be torn down.  I think ALL of the tall buildings are coming down.  We learned in a little exhibit about the rebuild that there will be a 7 story limit on all new buildings.

Another big one to come down.

You also see a lot of this, reconstruction.  It’s underway and buildings are being repaired and rebuilt everywhere.

Getting around town by car can be a challenge as the roads are constantly being worked on.  So the road you drove on yesterday is being worked on today.  Barb and I were looking for a store one day, saw it but were on the wrong side of the street.  Well no problem we will just go around the block.  WRONG!!!  After 15 minutes we gave up and just parked the car and walked.  🙂

This is the “famous” Cardboard Cathedral that was built to house the congregation of the Christchurch Cathedral that was destroyed.  It is of course not all cardboard but there is a lot of cardboard in the structure.  You can Google it and learn more about it.  It’s kind of cool.

The Cardboard Cathedral from the inside.

The city put up a temporary mall called “Re-Start”.  It is made from shipping containers and is very cleverly done.  They are all brightly painted with windows cut into the sides and front and are the homes for many shops, eating establishments and cafes.  I liked the Santa on top of the “Re-Start” mall with the construction site in front.  Sort of captures the mood of the city.  It is very much alive and coming back.

Barb at the Re-Start mall.  The place really hops.  Lots of people out shopping and getting ready for Christmas.

And there are some new building on their way.  It is really a unique opportunity to see a city rebuilding after such a devastating catastrophe.

We did our swim with the dolphins today. This is what Barb and I decided to give each other for Christmas. We had a great time. We drove an hour and a half out to Banks peninsula to the town of Akaroa. This little town on the shore of Akaroa harbor is surrounded by hills. It’s very picturesque. We boarded a boat and headed out into the harbor to swim with the Hector’s dolphins. These are the smallest and most endangered dolphins in the world. They are between 3 and 5 feet in length and are found only in New Zealand waters. For a while it looked like we were going to get skunked as the dolphins we were finding did not seem particularly interested in playing. Our crew was about to give up and we were heading back to port when they spotted another pod. They stopped the boat and we all jumped in.  It was very interesting, the dolphins would swim away from us, regroup and come in for another “fly by” encounter with “those humans”. They did this numerous times and would come within several feet of us. The whole swim lasted about 15 minutes.  It was just amazing.  I didn’t take the GoPro, it’s a long story, but it’s just as well as I would not have been able to get any good shots anyway. But the crew were taking pictures and got a really good one of me and 3 dolphins.

Banks peninsula.

This is the photo of me taken by the tour crew.

I got this image from the web.  It’s of course a Hector’s dolphin.

Akaroa Harbor

Unfortunately, the day ended on a sad note. We had finished our swim and were eating fish and chips out at the end of the pier when an ambulance drove out onto the pier. A speed boat came roaring in from the bay heading for where the ambulance had stopped. There was an EMT in the back of the boat clearly giving CPR to someone on the floor of the boat. They got him out of the boat onto the dock and worked on him for about 15 minutes then gave up. He clearly did not make it. We were told that he was out on one of the harbor tour boats and I’m guessing had a heart attack. Not the best way to end what had been a very fun day.

As in Auckland, our first week in Christchurch was spent circling the outskirts.  Yesterday we got bold and ventured downtown on  a very lovely day.  First we went to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, which are right next door to the Central Business District (CBD).  The gardens are surrounded by a very large park.  The gardens seem to blend seamlessly into the park, with lots of open grassy areas and the most astounding collection of HUGE trees, including a sequoia.  Given the size of the trees, I just don’t understand how they’re still standing after the two earthquakes.  The shrubs, too, were enormous.  Rhododendron trees – not bushes.  Next to the garden is a large swimming pool, much like Spruce Pool in Boulder, and although it was around 60 degrees, it was filled with splashing kids.

We then wandered a block toward the CBD.  As you may know, in Sept 2010, there was a large earthquake just west of Christchurch.  It happened in the middle of the night and no one was hurt but it did topple many unstable structures.  Our landlord lost both chimneys on his house.  He said this first earthquake was probably a mixed blessing, as it may have brought down the most unstable structures.  But then it probably significantly weakened others.

The second earthquake occurred in February 2011, around lunchtime, and was very shallow and had a higher “peak ground acceleration” than even the Haiti earthquake.  Both our landlord’s home and this little apartment are slated for razing, as the foundations of both have been weakened beyond repair.

It’s very hard to imagine the level of destruction until you wander around the CBD.  It is a mix of empty or rubble filled lots, empty high rise buildings waiting to be brought down, or construction sites with huge cranes towering above.  It appears that they want to save the facades of some of the older buildings, so they have stacked up shipping containers on the sidewalks to prop up the facade, when there is nothing but rubble behind.

But amidst all of this mess, someone had the bright idea to form a new shopping area right in the CBD using shipping containers.  So imagine the Pearl Street Mall made up of brightly colored shipping containers stacked on one another.  This ReStart Mall is amazing.  It was filled with shoppers, eaters, drinkers, buskers, and tourists, all out very much enjoying the day.  They’ve moved trendy shops, bars and small eateries into these shipping containers, where they have cut out some of the sides and put in plate glass sides.  All very cheerful and fun.  I would have to say that both the gardens/park and the CBD were very vibrant and busy, in the middle of this major destruction/construction zone.  Humans sure can be resilient when pushed.

We didn’t get down to see the old church, which was partially destroyed, or the temporary cardboard cathedral which was built to replace it until a new home is found.  Be sure to google it.  And we hope to get to the Canterbury Museum on the grounds of the Botanic Gardens.  But we’ll be around here for a while longer, so these are still on the list.

 

 

 

Hello all.  We arrived in Christchurch on Tuesday the 9^th. We like it here. The city is a more manageable size. Auckland, while a great city is VERY big. Christchurch is much more our size. There is construction going on everywhere. Remember this city was hit with a devastating earth quake in 2011. They are still very much rebuilding. Any tall building, say over 6 floors are empty and scheduled to be pulled down. But the city is busy and the Christmas shoppers are out in force.  Below are a few scenes of “downtown” Christchurch.

We went grocery shopping after we arrived and were treated to a beautiful sun set.

Here is our new home away from home.  Cherry tree cottage.  It’s  really nice place and set way back from the road as you can see below so it is nice and quiet.

The Stacey’s house is back on the left and the cottage is straight back attached to the garage.  It looks like we will be here until, maybe the 9th of Jan.

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Wednesday and Thursday we just sort of settled into our new place. It’s a very cute little one bedroom like our last pace but is a bit bigger with a bit more furniture and a dresser.  So we can actually put our underwear and socks in a drawer.  🙂  It’s the little things.

Thursday we bought a car, a 2005 Subaru Legacy. Yup we bought a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car. 🙂 We will pick it up on Monday the 15^th. Actually it will be nice to have a REAL car and not some POS rental car.

Our new wheels.  We will pick it up tomorrow, Monday.

Yesterday, Friday we drove a ½ hour south/east of Christchurch to a place called Godley Head Preserve. This is a large, beautiful point of land that forms the mouth of Whakaraupo harbor. It has a 2 hour hike around the point with a great view of the harbor and then wraps around with the pacific ocean to the east. We did the hike which terminates at Taylor’s Mistake beach. When we got home we looked up “Taylor’s Mistake” to find out just what was his big mistake. It turns out he was a ships captain that, at night mistook the beach as a passage into the harbor. Oops. The hike was really beautiful. Sorry Taylor.

A view of Whakaraupo harbor from the trail head parking lot.  The views from up there we spectacular.

The Pacific Ocean looking north.  Next stop North America.  Oh Fiji is on the way.  Be sure to stop there.  🙂

Getting artsy with the camera again.

Taylor’s Mistake beach.  Our hikes destination.  We did not bring swim gear but wish we had.  It is a nice little beach.

As we sat down at Taylor’s Mistake beach to eat our lunches we were descended upon by gulls.  Check out this guys red legs and feet.

Taylor’s Mistake beach from the road back to Christchurch.

Looking towards Christchurch from the road home.

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Today we drove an hour to the township of Waipara to do a very obscure hike to see some Maori cave art. The hike was very interesting but cold. In the low 60’s. No real trail, just some yellow markers on fence posts that mark the trail. We were hiking through cow and sheep pastures These pastures were on several large hills with cows and cow patties all around. Not your traditional hike but it was fun. The cave art was pretty cool too. It was a good day.

This was the hike.  Just follow the fence up over this hill and then the next.  While you can not see them in the photo there are cows up there.

Sheep, sheep everywhere.

Making our way to the top.

At last we made it to the Maori art work caves.

One of the more interesting drawings.  One VERY sad fact we learned about the drawings is that they were originally done in charcoal by the Maori.  However in the 1920’s the “director” of a museum had some of the drawing painted over with black and red house paint.  You have got to wonder.

A panorama from the top of the hill.  Just a beautiful place.  Just watch out for the cows.

On the way home I had to stop and take this.  I didn’t know they had named a town and park after me.  🙂

December 8th was our last full day in Auckland.  We headed back down to the wharf and took a ferry out to Rangitoto island.  This is a wild life sanctuary that the conservation people along with the Maori people are trying to restore to only native creatures and plants.  It is a volcanic island that last erupted about 600 years ago.  That is not that long ago so you see lots of scoria rock fields everywhere.  The vegetation is reclaiming the land but it it still has a lot more work to do.  We did the 1 hour hike to the summit and had our lunch there.  The views of Hauraki gulf were amazing.

This pretty little bird was looking for our lunch scraps.

The scoria rock fields were pretty much everywhere.This is the volcano crater.

We had been invited for  drink by our host family that evening.  So when we returned, we did some packing, showered and went upstairs to our hosts house and had not only a drink but dinner as well.  Dinner was a surprise for us but very fun.  The family is from Sri Lanka and we had a Sri Lankan dinner.  It really was a fun evening.  They are a very nice, interesting family.  They have two daughters, Natasha 20 and Natalie 14.  And they have a 19 year old Japanese girl exchange student living with them, Momi.  They took pictures when we left and when I get them I will update this post.  The only picture I have is of Natalie’s new kitty, Daisy.

Daisy

The next morning we finished packing our bags and headed to the airport.

So long Auckland, and hello Christchurch.

Today is December 7^th and we are planning a trip back to the western sea shore. I have been really sick for the past few days and have had little to no energy. Friday the 5^th we didn’t even leave the condo. I went from the bed to the couch and back again. I’m feeling better now and want to get the blog up to date. In spite of my lack of energy we have been getting out.

1-Dec

We drove to the west coast where we are going again today. We went to a small park called Cascade where they are these great big endangered trees. The Kauri trees. They are endangered because there is a fungus that is being transferred by soil erosion and hikers. We had to brush our hiking boots and then spray a disinfectant on them. It is a very cool place. You drive up to the park and you are in Hobbit land. Rolling grassing hills with an occasional tree then you start the hike and you would think that you entered a jungle. It’s a very diverse ecosystem. The Kauri trees are amazing.

 

Kauri tree

It was very jungle like.

After the trek through the Cascade park we drove to Bethells Beach. The west coast beaches are not the kind of beaches where I would want to take a swim. The surf is quite heaving and the currents very strong but they sure are beautiful.

After a hour on the beach we headed inland a bit to Bethells dune lake. This is a very strange place. There is a big break in the hills that are the backdrop of Bethells beach. Over thousands of years the wind has blown sand inland through the break and the hills form a bit of a bowl so the sand has built up into some very large dunes. The dunes blocked off a little river to form a lake. We parked the car, walked ¼ mile towards the lake you come out of bush to a huge dune. The “hike” is up over the dune. Very cool. There is a hike around the lake and we did an out and back on that.

We have just started up the dunes heading for the lake and we found and rescued this guy who had been trapped out there for days.  🙂  The real idea was to give some perspective on the size of these dunes.

We are getting closer to the lake which you can see in the distance.

This was very odd.  So between the grass and the dune is the little river that the dunes blocked off which form the lake.  Very neat and tidy.  Here there are dune and her there is grass.  And yes there is a guy down there mowing the grass.  If you have an answer for that let us know.

We are now on the trail around the lake and looking back at the dunes.

Me getting artsy with the camera.

3-Dec

Yesterday and today were Auckland days.  Since I am feeling better about driving on the left, I felt like I was ready to tackle the city.  We walk around down town and out onto the wharf.  The wharf was very cool.  New Zealand is a big sailing country and has always been a major contender in the Americas cup sail boat race.  There were some REALLY nice racing boats at moorings and one of the old cup boats on display.  I loved it.  Auckland is a nice, clean city.  I was amazed at how quiet it was for a big city.  They must have some noise ordinances or something.  No beeping horns, a little construction noise but surprising quiet.

The University of Aucklands clock tower.  The university has a beautiful campus.

One of the racing boats.

I believe this is the same boat out on the water later that day.

This is one of the Americas cup boats on display.  It was the largest boat to compete since the late 1800’s.

A side bar.  We were told NOT to ride a bicycle in New Zealand.  And I think that was good advice.  Drivers do not like them.  We even saw a TV new segment on the subject and they interviewed driver.  They are NOT cyclist friendly.  Down at the wharf we saw this “Christmas” tree.  Maybe this is what they do with the bikes of cyclists that don’t make it.  🙂

We also took a 15 minute ferry ride over to Devonport and hiked up Mount Victoria.  There was great view of the city from there.

4-Dec

This was a special day.  We got up early, in spite of the fact that I was not feeling well and drove for about 3 hours to the town of Waitomo to visit the glow worm caves.  If you’ve never heard of them, read on they are really cool.  They are actually not worms at all but the larva of some sort of fly.  But as our guide said, “You can’t very well get people to come to the glow maggot caves.”  🙂  They are 1 to 2 inches in length and only the very tail end of their body glows a pale green.   The glow attracts insects into the many glue ladened silk threads they drop from the cave ceiling.  When an insect gets caught in the glue, the worm just reels up the thread and has dinner.  They are just beautiful.  For what it’s worth we visited the same cave that David Attenborough (my hero) visited when he filmed them in the “Life on Earth” series.  I have to say that one of the main reasons I wanted to come to New Zealand is that I have always loved nature and nature TV shows.  And New Zealand and Australia have such unique life.  I have seen these creatures and ecosystems for years on TV and am now able to see them in person.  Like the gannets and the glow worms.  This is very special trip for me.

Without a VERY expensive camera or a very long exposure you can’t get a good picture of them so the tour company provides them.  So the pictures below are not mine.

These are the glue laden silk threads.

We were in a raft like this, but of course the lights were out.  Yes, it was a bit tight but worth it.

It’s like lying on your back on a grassy noel at night looking at the stars.

We also visited a second cave.  This one had the remains of a Moa bird.  You may be able to make out its skull in the lower left and a broken femur in the top right.  Because of the broken femur they believe it probably fell into the cave.  Moa were large flightless birds much like ostriches, that lived in New Zealand up until just a thousand years ago.  Some of these birds were over 10 feet tall.  They were hunted to extinction.

It was a long but very rewarding day.

5 & 6 Dec

There is little to tell for these two day.  My cold was getting progressively worse so we pretty much hung around the apartment.  One or two little trips to shop but nothing very exciting.  Oh Barb bought an iTouch Air.  That was one of our side trips.

We’ve been in Auckland for almost 2 weeks now.  They describe Auckland as a “supercity”, as at some point some surrounding suburbs were incorporated into the city.  So it now has almost 1.4 million people, an astonishing 1/3 of the entire population of the country.  The first week we spent dabbling around the outer Auckland regions, as Spencer figured out how to drive on “the Other” side of the road.  It seemed like a nice, livable city but with rather drab architecture (basically no identifiable style).  We finally ventured into the Central Business District, the “CBD” earlier this week and I was very surprised how nice it is.

The first day we started down Queen Street, basically the main drag, and then veered off to see the University of Auckland.  The campus was really lovely, about 2 blocks from the CBD.  The next day we ventured further down Queen Street to the harbor, which is really spectacular.  The CBD’s skyscrapers were strangely very nicely done and they had spruced up the harbor area a number of years ago for the Rugby World Cup.  There was an enormous cruise ship anchored there, and a marina filled with eye-popping boats.  It was a lovely place to walk, and there were a number of outdoor cafes/restaurants in which to enjoy the view and nice weather.

We then hopped on one of the ferries to head across the harbor to Devonport, a nice, touristy little village about 15 minutes from downtown.  We walked up Mt. Victoria and at the top, we had a wonderful 360 degree view of the harbor, downtown and harbor islands.  From that view, you could see that if you stood the cruise ship on end, it was actually larger than some of the largest downtown skyscrapers.

It’s bigger than the buildings.

Auckland is also amazingly diverse – absolutely not white-bread Boulder.  This means that there are stores and restaurants of every conceivable nature and ethnicity.  We head to the South Island on Tuesday and I’m curious to see if this holds true

 

Auckland skyline

Barb asked me to up a video of the panorama from the top of Mount Victoria.

Water water everywhere.

Hi,

I finally cracked the upload file limit problem.  I can now upload large video files to the blog.  Rather than go back and update the Fiji dive posts I thought I would just put the 3 special videos here in a single post.  If you click the little symbol in the lower right hand corner of the video player you’ll get a full screen version of the video.

This is the dive site called “Wheat Fields”.  As I said in the original post once I got the video posted you would understand how the site got it’s name.  The entire top of the coral head is covered in these golden colored sea anemone.  In the current they look like a field of wheat blowing in the wind.  Very cool!

Our last day of diving we did two of my all time favorite dives.  A great way to end our Fiji week.  We did both of these dives last year and I had written in my log book how much I’d liked them.  Above is the dive called “Mellow Yellow”.  We are approaching the coral head and LOOK AT ALL THE FISH!  Awesome!

And our last dive in Fiji was “Purple Haze”.  The different corals on this dive are quite amazing.  Note the little fish that darts out at me to defend its patch of coral.  And at the end of the video is my dive buddy Barb.

I’m sorry it took me so long to get these videos posted but between slow internet access and dealing with the upload limit of this blog software it took a little effort.  But I cracked the code.

Enjoy,  we did.  🙂

Spence

 

Hello again.

I hope that all of you had a great thanksgiving.  We had a great thanksgiving day at Muriwai beach, as mentioned in my previous post.  Also in my previous post I mentioned that the 28th was a rainy day and that we were headed for the Auckland museum.  When we went to get into the rental car we discovered that it had been broken into.  (Three cars were broken into along the street.)  We were very lucky as the only thing of any value that we had left in the car was our GPS and the thieves had simply tossed it out onto the front lawn.  Luckily, even with the rain it was in perfect condition, so we lost nothing.  It did however put the squash on our museum visit, as it took the better part of the day to file a police report and get a replacement car.  The police were very nice but the people at the rental car company, Jucy were the pits.  I think it may be the worst customer service I have ever experienced.  They were completely indifferent to our situation and offered NO help.  Oh well we did get a better replacement car.

Armed with our new car we did have time to find a scuba shop and get my backup regulator fixed.  It was acting up while we were in Fiji.

Yesterday the 29th we successful in visiting the Auckland museum.  A nice eclectic museum.  There was a Maori section, a WWII section, a natural history section, a volcano section and a “Wearableart” exhibit.  (http://worldofwearableart.com)  Check it out.  It was fun and entertaining.

We had our lunch on the museum lawn that looked out over a large cricket club.  So Barb and I watched 30 minutes of cricket while we ate our lunches.  We have NO idea what those people were doing down there.  🙂  I think we need some help from an expert.

Today is Sunday and we drove to a large farmers/flee market and picked up some great fruits and vegetables or vege as they call them here.

Spence

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Our broken into rental car.

Cricket.  If someone can explain what these people are doing I would greatly appreciated it.