43.5300° S, 172.6203° E - Christchurch

Marlborough Sound

        

      

Beer Festival in CHCH

The Container Mall

Christchurch Cathedral Post Earthquake

The Cardboard Cathedral

The Memorial for the 2011 Earthquake 

CTV Site 

We headed off to Christchurch early doors and got the ferry over to Picton, passing through the Marlborough sound. We stayed with the eldest of the Charlick's, Sam, who kindly took us to a beer festival in central Christchurch on the saturday. On the sunday we went for a mooch in the city centre. 

In 2011 185 people died after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit the city. Today the centre of Christchurch is all slighty bizarre which is to be expected after the earthquake, there are shops still standing which look still in tact but have been abandoned since the day of the earthquake due to structural damage. We passed a theatre which looked as though it had been cut in half, such as you see with a model building you can see straight to the back of the theatre where the rows of seats are still intact. The stage has fallen away, so that now the play that is unfolding is the rebuilding of the city. 

Despite this tragedy the atmosphere in the city is warm and welcoming. The damage has been created into makeshift venues, such as The Pallet Pavillion and The Smash Bar. In the February 2011 earthquake the cathedral was famously destroyed as shown in the pictures above. So they built a temporary new cathedral that was opened August 2013. It is predominantly made of massive cardboard tubes. It's really cool and hopefully will always stay there, the people who used to volunteer in the old cathedral now come here. 

Across the road from the Cardboard Cathedral is the memorial to the 185 people that died in the 2011 earthquake. Each empty chair represents each person that is now absent since the disaster. Just over the road from the memorial is the CTV site. This marks the spot where the CTV building used to stand and in this one building 115 people died when it collapsed. Oh and we also saw two wizards having a nice coffee and a catch up....sometimes potions just don't cut it like coffee ey! 

38.4000° S, 175.7167° E - North Island

North Island was our first trip and explore of New Zealand. And I have drawn you all a handy route of our trip. To get too and from Auckland from Wellington we got a relocation hire car and a campervan. So this is a wonderful thing, you move the car for the hire company within a few days and you pay almost zilch for the privelige and get a free tank of fuel, hurrah!! 

     I feel like we should just get this over and done with, we have a confession ...we didn't go to Hobbiton, we didn't do Lord of the Rings. Now while I feel that we could get along with a Hobbit very well, I too a small creature and Steff with his overly hairy feet, we just skipped past it because the films sent us to sleep. Sorry, I'm just being honest.

            More of my artistic talent

So our trip took us firstly over to the east coast to Napier and Hawke's Bay. This is a cute little place that's architecture is all 1920s Art Deco and Hawke's Bay is full of Vineyards! We then headed up the windy road to Taupo, this was the first time we had really driven though mountains and seen views that you would associate with New Zealand and we saw thousands of sheep, the stereotypes were all starting to come into play. We stopped in Taupo by the lake for the evening but pressed on the next morning to Auckland. 

   So we drove into Auckland the largest city in New Zealand where over a third of the population live, and we drove to the centre of the city like you would drive with more ease around the Newport Coldra with the new road layout since the Ryder Cup. The roads here are so small, the main highways are just like the Old Raglan road, everywhere! Only about 20KM out of Auckland did we finally hit two lanes and then three!! And there is no traffic either, it's pretty lovely! So we dropped luminous lime car off and found a hostel.

The next day we hotfooted it to Paihia, The Bay of Islands. Right at the top of North Island, a beautiful place with 144 islands dotted off its coast. Here we got slightly stranded due to Cyclone Luci but it was just super rainy and windy, nothing movie like. We walked a long way to see a distinctly average waterfall and passed the house where the treaty of Waitaingi was signed. 

    

We then made our way back down stopped in Auckland again for the night and went to Waiheke island. A subtropical beauty that is only 40 minutes by ferry from Auckland.

          Auckland Sky Tower Selfie

                   Auckland Skyline

                    Waiheke Island 

Then we got a campervan and it was wonderful! We had an insight to being middle aged and stopping off for a nice cuppa on the side of the road when we spotted a nice view. We are very much looking forward to retirement now. We headed to Raglan on the West coast for the first night. A cute little place known for its surf, a far cry from the Raglan off the A39. It looks very much like Rhossili but It's pretty cool as it has black volcanic sand. 

The next day we headed down South stopping at Waitamo on the way. Here it is famous for their glowworm caves. It was pretty cool but uber touristy and expensive for what could have been for all we knew some good quality LED lights in the cave roof. 

We loved our camper though and tomorrow we pick up another camper to explore South Island, wonderful!

H

41.2889° S, 174.7772° E - Wellington

After a long journey from Chile we got to Wellington and after an over emotional and loud, love actually style of seeing my Dad for the first time since May, we had our first trip around Wellington. 

The city sits of the bottom of the North Island and for many it is the last stop before heading across the Cook Straight to the South Island. Full of cafés, bars and vintage shops (yayy) and with everything in walking distance it is a very nice place to be. Luckily for us Dad lives on the best street in Wellington, so we haven't had to go far to see the heart of the city (or the bars).

We spent the next week trying out many of these bars and cafés, and experiencing a Courtney Place hangover. We took a cycle to one of the many bays on the coast Lyall bay, which with the combination of fish and chips and seagulls it didn't look to far off Cornwall.

       Giant squid at Te Papa Museum

           Standard Lord of the Rings 

                    Maxy and Me

Haz 

Valparasio & Santiago

                Our little house

                   An Italiano

             The lovely street dogs

           Valparasio view at night 

       The peeking duck I ordered....

                 

            

We made our way down Chile after the salt flats. Bar the nice little town of San Pedro on the border there is pretty much just desert between there and the South. After a few night buses and a pit stop in La Sarena, where we went star gazing -One of the best places to see stars in the world, even without a telescope you could see far away galaxy's. 

The next stop was Valparasio on the coast about an hour from Santiago. A really nice place with winding hills, street art and cafés. We stayed in a really nice hostel - Jacaranda owned by two lovely Chilean men. There were two parts to the hostel and we stayed actually in there house, so we had a nice little garden and even very accomadating to us coming back battered.

      On one of these occasions Steff and I sauntered out to find a club or bar with music of some description which wasn't salsa. Due to the level of rum and cocktails consumed we wobbled somehow into a bar that was actually a private 50th bash for a chap from Grenwich, fantastic! Our nationality gained us free champagne and beers all night and after dancing (badly) to some Kinks, Clash and Undertones we somehow wobbled back to our house. Great night and ever so cheap! The next day was the annual RedBull Valparaiso downhill bike race. This consists of some crazy people riding insanely fast down step sets of steps, over jumps, and so forth through the streets of Valparasio. After a few Italianos (American hotdogs with accompanied by tomatoes and fresh mushed up avocados, delicious!) and Cervesas (beer) we got over the hangover and walked to the top of the track, though the queuing system was below par compared to English standards, despite this unorganisation it was a lovely day. 

Our pal Marcial made a little video of the day - http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F_LyKup8MR8 

We then headed for Santiago, our last stop in South America. We explored the city for a couple of days and then said farewell to Mel and Marcial as they headed on to Santa Cruz. So after three weeks it was now just Steff and I, not for long though as that eve we met Faye and Jon, fellow Monmouthians! Our last couple of days were spents sunbathing drinking rum and havinng a Chinese that we hoped to be Caton Kitchen but just didn't make the cut. Then with a Monmouth Hangover we had to fly to New Zealand for the next adventure! Ciao!!