We hopped back onto the Kiwi Ex bus and made the journey from Queenstown to Christchurch in a few hours, out of the mountains and into the Cantebury region. We made a quick stop at Lake Pukaki - a brilliant blue lake right beneath Mt. Cook, however the peak was in the clouds so I didn't get any great pics of the mountain. We passed by Twisel - a town near the base of Mt. Cook. There is a lot of area around Twisel featured in the Lord of the Rings movies, and driving past felt pretty neat. We made it into Cantebury, and I realized that it reminds me of home: because it's flat. The region is largely farmland - we passed wineries, fruit and vege farms and tons of dairies.
We ended up in Christchurch around 6 pm that evening.
Christchurch is devastating. Since September 2010 there has been close to 10,000 earthquakes and aftershocks recorded in the area, the worst earthquake occurring in February 2011, causing the most damage and shutting down a lot of the downtown core of Christchurch.
We ended up staying at the YMCA, which was a short 10 min walk from the "Dead Zone". We took a walk around the destruction and I was taken aback at the devastation in the area. The downtown core in Christchurch is a ghost town, no one is around, all the shops are closed, huge buildings are falling apart or crumbled and the whole area is fenced off. Police patrol the area to make sure no one enters the dead zone, and basically the only people waling around are tourists. The whole area is very eerie, and it reminded me of a zombie movie - the sense of terrible devastation hangs in the air. Although Christchurch is shut down in many areas and there is not a lot to do anymore, it was worth spending a night there just to see it.
This is so sad about Christchurch. I was there about a month before the huge earthquake hit last Feb. and it was beautiful. I loved the city.
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