Cool in Christchurch

Had a bit of a tricky start to Christchurch. We arrived in the afternoon and thought, why not start with a drive out to Akaroa and the Banks Peninsula.
This is where I realised that buying a travel guide over a year in advance wasn't such a great idea, despite any good intentions of forward planning. Which never happened anyway. My Discover New Zealand book was from Oct 2010 and therefore not updated since the Christchurch earthquake of February 2011. So we spent around 2 hours trying to find a scenic route mentioned in the book, including being given various well-intended but misleading information by a number of locals, before aborting our mission to Akaroa for the day.
When we got back to Christchurch it was pretty dusky and we went for a walk through the red zone, which is the area deemed structurally unsafe post-earthquake. To give you a picture, this is the whole centre of the city and at the moment there's just one street going through it that is open to the public.
When we had our walk at twilight there was a really eerie feeling around. I don't want to offend anyone, because it's real life and people have suffered, but it's like something out of a film, with the streets being abandoned in a flash. The traffic lights were still on, but just flashing a constant red. I don't think the light helped but it felt like a ghost town and I felt really quite sad. Ciaran probably even more so, as he had been to Christchurch before the quake. Yet it's really not a ghost town. Even in the gloomy night you could see signs of resilience, for lack of a better word. There are containers stacked 5 or 6 high in many places, and it's only when you look closer that you realise that they are stacked up to provide support to building facades that made it through the earthquake. Even if it's just the front wall of the building that held up, there's determination to hold onto to that, to try and salvage anything from the past, for the future.

It was much better in the daytime, much less ghost town-esque. Containers are very versatile it seems, as not only are they being used to prop up buildings, but also as temporary shops in the re:start container mall, which is really quite cool. Most shops and services have relocated to the suburbs, but a select few have got involved in the temporary urban shopping centre and the place has a real buzz about it. We very much enjoyed our coffee served from a container! Not to mention the delicious Thai meal we had for dinner the previous night, cooked in a container and served from an adjoining caravan.

Rebuilding Christchurch is going to be a slow process. While walking round we saw a crane at work, demolishing a building, and it looked really slow going. You do wonder where all the money will come from. But we saw the plans for the new Christchurch and they will get there. I can't wait to come back and see what it's like in a few years time.