Christchurch via Arthurs Pass

Today was a travel day, we spent most of it in the car with a few highlights to break up the journey.

Edd was up earlier than me (surprise surprise) and whilst I packed away the bed he made us porridge so we sat out in the morning sun to have breakfast before hitting the road.

I drove to try and see if it would help with motion sickness, we had stunning views all the way of course. Through a very wide valley with big mountains around the edge. We climbed up quickly at the end to Arthur's Pass. I was adamant we had driven over it as we started descending again but we soon came to Arthur's Pass Village. We pulled up and followed the path to the Devils punch bowl waterfall. The walk was stunning through green woods, with every surface covered in interesting and different weird moss.

I decided on the way up to the waterfall that I am going to do a frame of green when I get home, I'm going to get a mount with 9 holes and fill them with different green foliage, arty!! That meant poor Edd followed me through the woods snapping anything I could find that looked interesting, he got into it too and it was great, we got carried away as everything was green and beautiful. I think the few people who passed us on the path thought we were mad taking photos of the ground whilst there was a stunning waterfall above us!

We arrived at the waterfall view point and were not disappointed, the waterfall was stunning, absolutely brilliant, 'arguably the best we've seen' according to Edd. I agree, the best by a long way, especially with such a lovely, deserted walk up to it.

We both really enjoyed our stop, a really special time out together with stunning scenery at every angle. Back in the car and the weather changed every corner, one minute beautiful sunshine, the next really heavy rain and even thick fog!

We stopped for lunch at a small town that is known for its famous pies. The plan was to pick up pies and find somewhere nice in the country to eat lunch but we ended up back on the road and it turned out to be difficult to pull over anywhere. Without much say in the matter we ended up in Christchurch through lack of stopping options. We parked up in the Park carpark and ate lunch there. The pies were definitely worth their reputation and we were both fairly full after all the rich gravy.

We left the car and wandered into town expecting a trendy coffee, cafe vibe. We had been told that it wasn't worth staying too long and there's wasn't much there. I have to say I found it really quite sad, I couldn't believe how damaged the town still is after the earthquake. Every street has building works, scaffolding and road diversions.

The earthquake was in 2011 and I naively thought that the city would be back to normal 5 years later. It really isn't. The 're:start' mall is where lots of the shops are and I was expecting a 'westfield' style shopping centre. Instead we found lots of porter cabins, brightly decorated full of clothes and some food vans selling ice creams etc in an attempt to make it an area for people to gather.

We spent the couple of hours we had wandering around discussing how devastating the earthquake must have been and how long it must take to come back from something so huge as a city. I hadn't realise the initial quake was on 22nd Feb, the aftershock that did most the damage was December 23rd. That's so long after, I assumed the aftershock was a few days later.

The cathedral in the centre was damaged badly and has been blocked off and stabilised, at some point it is due to be deconstructed and apparently there is great debate about what to replace it in that space. 

The big departmental store had a sign explaining its history and how it had managed to continue business even through 8 months of being shut after the quake. I imagine it was one of the first places to re open after the shock. I have to say we didn't see any houses still being repaired, just bigger main city buildings.

Having seen the centre of town we nipped into the Christchurch museum which was really interesting, explained a little of the original Maori lifestyle, then we went through a traditional Victorian New Zealand street and finally a exhibition about 75 years of Air New Zealand. We also saw the inside of a Kiwi couples' house, they had collected hundreds of thousand paua shells and had decorated the whole of their house. 

They had decided to let tourists in and for years coach loads of people had visited them. They died in their late 90's famous in NZ, their son donated their lounge to the museum. The museum was really lovely, if not a bit random, we got kicked out at 5pm so we walked through the botanical gardens and back to the car.

Tonight we are freedom camping properly. We have to park near a public toilet as we don't have one onboard and are not allowed to go anywhere without a toilet but we are in the middle of a field with nothing but a little drop loo. No water, no showers and no cooking area. It's sort of cool and free! 

We spent the evening here enjoying the sun setting and eating left overs from yesterday. We are the only ones here, private camping! There's a campsite across the road that's further away from the road and has a few more facilities but we visited and didn't feel so comfortable with the other trailers that were staying there.

Since then we have been sorting blogs, photos etc and when Edd needed the toilet I jumped at the opportunity to be accompanied over the field so I didn't have to go it alone!! We stepped out of the van to the most stunning star studded night sky! We have just spent the last 15 minutes sat in the van with the windows down staring up! 

I'm very proud to say I found the southern cross on my own (knowledge from when we came here 15 years ago!!) and pointed out the Milky Way to Edd too. The sky is incredible, I can't understand how it's so much better than England but I guess partly they don't have so much light pollution here with such a small population comparatively to us.

Bed soon, I'm going to struggle to take off my down jacket tonight and I've already warned Edd that if I need the toilet in the night he may get a wake up call!!!