After a really good flight over to Christchurch from Sydney we made our way through customs where Peter declared his Black pepper which was packed in his rucksack. Basically we had bought a new one in Australia and hadn't opened it. When we got through there was an information desk with loads of free leaflets and maps. Lucy went over picking up about 50 things whilst Peter went to the ATM. Finally leaving the airport we caught a shuttle bus to St Albans where we were stopping with a couple of friends Will & Amanda. We arrived at their house around 1.30pm and didn't do much for the afternoon, until Will came home from work with some beers in his hands. We decided to go out for tea to an English themed pub called the Fox and Ferret. We ordered a meal to share called the steak 'n' ribs, my gosh.. it was massive but we managed to demolish everything apart from a little bit of salad.
The morning after we had a sleep in as we were quite tired, Amanda had left us her back door key so that we could come and please as we like. Our original plans were to walk into Christchurch and have a wander round looking at all the destruction of the earthquake but once getting ready and trying to lock the back door, we failed miseribly. The key didn't work, leaving us to sit in the house all day. Suppose it helped catching up with blogs haha.
When we could finally get out of the house the morning after thats when we went into the city, it was horrendous to see all the buildings which had been damaged and basically all the buildings that had already been demolished. It is 14 months ago since the earthquake, yet we were told it will take them 15 years to have everything up and running as normal. Shops had moved into temporary containers, there was a red zone in the middle of the city where nobody was allowed to go. It was heartbreaking seeing the flowers that were led for people who had died. We had heard about a museum which had everything in about the earthquake but when we got there it had closed for a couple of months unfortunately , so we were unable to go in. Next to the museum were the botanical gardens, all the leaves had dropped from the trees and it looked beauitful, to which the both of us tried to get pictures throwing leaves in the air.. we tried but didnt succeed very well.
Throughout the rest of christchurch we didn't do much apart from watch Peter Kay and a couple of other comedians whilst trying to organise a campervan to pick up on the 12th May.
Saturday 12th May arrived and we got up early to pack our bags and make our way to the Apollo depot, this is where we picked our campervan up from.
Our first thoughts of the campervan... s***.. THIS IS MASSIVE!!!!