Christchurch - Trip Down Memory Lane

On my way from Aoraki to Christchurch, I spent two nights in Lake Tekapo to visit the Church of the Good Shepard and the momument dedicated to said Shepard. Otherwise, I was not doing much, but mainly recharged after an eventful time in the mountains.

After Tekapo I was heading to Christchurch, but instead of driving there directly. I did a cheeky little detour to Mount Sunday. It featured heavily in - I think you can guess where I am going with this -, yes, Lord of the Rings. It was the home of the King of Rohan. While the weather wasn't fully with me, it still is an amazing place with fantastic views over the great planes of central Canterbury.

Then it was time to drive to Christchurch and after spending a night in jail (my hostel used to be a former jailhouse), I dropped my rental car off and headed to the city centre.

Christchurch's city centre has a special place in my heart and life. I was here in 2011, when a terrible earthquake devastated the city and took the lives of over 180 people. I was living in the city centre at the time and doing an internship a mere 15 minute walk away, when the earthquke struck at 12.52pm. I was not able to get back to my flat and had to rely an my co-workers and the red cross for some help. That's a story for another time, though.

Anyway, so as I was walking through the city 13 years later, I heardly recognised anything. It was rebuilt or still mostly in construction to be honest. I visited the church (not even close to being rebuilt), my former language school (still a huge construction site) and my accomodation at the time (nowhere near of being useful for anything). It filled me with sadness that a city that I really liked, was not even close to its former glory. Only New Market - a newly build food court - looked very promising.

As part of my stroll around, I did visit the very interesting Quake museum that informs and educated visitors about the causes, effects and devastation the earthquake had on the city. What was really nice, was that I had a chance to talk to the staff about the events on that infamous day - truly taking me back in time.

With that trip down memory lane behind, that evening, I was picked up by Laura as I would spend the next 3 nights with her and Nick, both of whom I met on my Africa adventure at the start of this trip. I gotta say, it is so nice to have ‘friends’ all around the world. It was a heartfelt reunion and we chatted about our time in Africa together, how the tour went on after I had left and all the good moments we shared together.

Over the next two days, both of them took a day off to show me around places that I either have not been to or wanted to go back to.

On the first day, Nick and I packed up their Swiss Shepard dog, Duke, and we went to Arthur's Pass to walk up a beautiful waterfall called Devil's Punshbowl (don't ask, I have no idea about the name). Afterwards, we went to Castle Hill, which is a beautiful spot and served as a movie backdrop of Narnia and, of course, a bit of Lord of the Rings. In the evening, we had a big family dinner with Laura's family at her sister home and talked about all things New Zealand, travel and Africa.

The next day, Laura and I went to Akaroa, which was my first day trip out of Christchurch 13 years ago. The weather was not ideal, but at least sort of dry and we went for a little stroll with her family's dog - a German Sheppard. In other words, they have two very big, but very lovely dogs. After the hike, we sat down by the water, had some chips and chatted the time away. In the evening, we drove to her family's barch - i.e. weekend hut, warmed up over the fire and then went to a final meal in a local pub.

In the morning, we visited a cute weekend market in Lyttleton, before I had to say goodbye.

It was also time to leave New Zealand behind, as I got increasingly cold and I did not really have the clothes for it.

I had such a fantastic time with the two and it was absolutely brilliant to see them 6 months later and still connect super easily and re-live our Africa trip. The two are typical Kiwi's, i.e. very outdoorsy, hands-on and active. Just like the whole country, basically.Read more