The Quake (City)

New Zealand is cold. That was my first thought as I stepped off the plane from Brisbane to Christchurch. (Just so you’re all aware, New Zealand’s time zone is 2 hours ahead of the Gold Coast, making it 16 hours ahead of Boston) Yes, I said Christchurch, which many of you know as the part of New Zealand that recently got hit by a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in March. Coming here, we thought we would be fine, that we wouldn’t feel any of the effects of the passed earthquake, but we were quite wrong. For one, five minutes ago there was an aftershock, the entire room shook, and the TV went all staticky. Luckily, Brittany, Jill, Jenna, and myself are fine and the woman at the front desk said that they get aftershocks at least twice a day. It was mostly just scary because none of us have ever felt anything like that before, since we are all from New England. Another realization of the effects of the quake in March, we soon realized, were that most areas of Christchurch are still suffering.The center of the city is mostly closed for reconstruction, the town of New Brighton (where our hostel is located) is practically all closed, and everywhere you drive in the city there are fallen buildings and roads of holes. Most of the landmarks we wantedto see in the city are closed until further notice. It’s kind of an odd feeling being here and seeing all the tragedy. Before we flew in, I obviously knew that there had been a severe earthquake, but it’s one of those things that I’ve never experienced and therefore never realized the magnitude of what the effects would be. The locals are so calm about it; whenever we ask what we can do they say, “oh you could do this…but, ohwait that’s closed because of the earthquake.” It’s something that really blows my mind and puts life into perspective of just how lucky I truly am. We flew into Christchurch on Easter Sunday, so no big family dinner for us L but we were excited to finally be in New Zealand. We got to Point Break Backpackers around midnight, made our way to our room, and passed out for the night. We planned on waking up bright and early on Monday so we could go to the Adrenaline Forest, which is essentially a ropes and zip line course in trees up to 30 meters high. Little did we know that Monday was ANZAC Day. ANZAC, which stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, is one of the biggest holidays down here and all businesses are closed until at least 1pm. This wasn’t the only disappointment we encountered; it was also raining- cold and raining. We had no other choice but to sit around a table in the café downstairs, eat overpriced toast, and play hours of Monopoly until one. After one o’clock, we realized we were absolutely starving, so we took the bus to a shopping mall across the city, walked around a bit, and finally found a little pub to eat at. We got a pitcher of local Tui (t-oo-ey) beer, interesting because at home on the Gold Coast we love a beer called Toohey’s… Anyway, I got a beef schnitzel with a creamy mushroom sauce and hot chips and it was delicious. After another pitcher of Tui Blonde, we headed back to the hostel to do… well, to do nothing because after all it was ANZAC day in a city where everything was mostly closed without a national holiday. We decided Tuesday was better for the forest, rain or shine.So, Tuesday we woke up to see a beautiful sky of clouds and a little rain. We didn’t care though; we were determined to get to that forest. First things first, we needed to get some breaky that was delicious, nutritious, and didn’t burn a hole in our wallets and boy, did we find it at a little café called Janel’s. Janel’s was run by an older couple that had clearly retired and opened up the shop in an area of their country that they loved- too precious. After we ate our homemade toasted sandwiches, we took the bus to the Adrenaline Forest and let me tell you IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. Now, I’m a little scared of heights, but if you remember from my blog The Reef, this trip I am being fearless. We made our way out on the ropes and I was kind of scared when we got up really high, but it was worth it. The experience was amazing and quite the workout. Unfortunately, my iPhone was out of battery, so there are only pictures and no videos of our time, but just try and imagine me and Jenna flying down zip lines and climbing on spider web –like ropes in trees taller than anything you’ve ever seen. After an exhausting day, the four of us headed back to our hostel area to get some chicken fingers and fish and chips at a little place we had seen before we left New Brighton. With surprise, however, we found out that the little restaurant had a lot more to offer. It definitely didn’t help that our stomachs were basically empty, but I’m almost positive that we ate just about everything in the shop. To put it simply and after much debate, our table had 3 orders of chips, 3 “hotdogs,” 2 orders of six chicken nuggets, one cheeseburger, and one chicken burger. I know what you’re thinking, “why would hot dog be in quotes?” Well, this would be because it was not a typical hotdog. It was actually a sausage on a stick and then deep fried… YES, deep-fried. No worries, no one who ordered it could finish it and after three bites we all gave up on it, but I can’t say the same for the rest of the food. We got back to our room, experienced, the aftershock (of the earthquake, not of stuffing our faces with fried goodness), and snuggled into bed to warm up for the night. Overall, Christchurch was good to us and we enjoyed our time here, but we are definitely ready to get our RV and drive it all over the south island… Oh, right, I forgot to mention that. The four of us rented a RV and are driving from Christchurch then south to Queenstown then moving back up north to a glacier in Franz Josef and finally leaving Sunday out of Christchurch. This is going to be an unforgettable Easter Break, I can already tell.