Another early start to catch the 8 am ferry to Picton, the journey across the Cook Strait (named after Gary Rhodes, probably, or Gordon Ramsey even) takes 4 hours, the ferry, it appears, from all the French nomenclature, to be an ex English channel ferry, so second hand then.
It's not getting any warmer so the jeans and Joseph fleece are back out.
Everyone in New Zealand is English, or at lease everyone I speak to, I can't imagine there are any gap year students left in Blighty, everyone else is Japanse ( I think there is a direct train route)
We grabbed a bite to eat in Picton before boarding the Pacific Coastal train for our 5 hour journey down the East Coast of the South Island to Christchurch, we set off through wine country, apparently this right hand corner receives twice as much sunlight as anywhere in New Zealand, so at least an hour a week then.
For all you trainophobes this journey is 347km, with 21 tunnels and 175 bridges, the train is a damn site faster than the last one so it's all a bit of a blur....and I fell asleep, so just imagine the rest...wine....whales...seals...sunshine.
In February of this year Christchurch was hit by an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, already rocked by a larger quake in November last year, already weak buildings were felled and 181 people lost their lives.
I wasn't really sure what to expect as we pulled into the station, it all seemed normal...
But then, when you look closer, as we drove in the taxi, you can follow cracks down the pavement, then they turn right up a wall, exploding it, or left up a building, splitting it in two.
The severity of it all didn't become apparent until we walked to the town centre - because we couldn't, it was all closed down...condemned. An 8 ft high fence sounded the entire central business district, you could see shattered glass, masonry and an upheaval in the road. When we walked around the fence line, buildings outside the zone had been uprooted from there foundations leaving a 4 " gap all around, restaurants were locked and empty, tables still set, a layer of dust on the tables, chairs knocked over as people had rushed out. Each building had it's own special marking designating its status: red for condemned, orange for under review and green for habitable. It was the silent eeriness of the place, no pedestrians no noise...difficult to describe. After walking an hour we managed to find one restaurant serving food, it must have been the only one open, as it was packed.
As a part of our budget accommodation drive we were staying at the YMCA, however our room was just a room with a shared bathroom, which apparently wouldn't do. In England if you want to use the bathroom it costs 20 pence, in Christchurch at the YMCA, it costs another $40. It maybe fun to stay at the YMCA, but it's not cheap to poop...I didn't see that in the lyrics
We pick up our car here tomorrow for the next 700 miles.
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