To Christchurch

Things I forgot. (Typed using the on screen keyboard of my tablet in the airport.) 

While we were waiting to cross Custom Street, I heard someone say “Awwww. Cute.” Then she came over to me to say hello to Kally, who was sitting in her bag on my bag. For those of you who haven’t “met” Kally, she is a little pink bear, given to me by my friend Karen Hally before I went to England. Because I was on my own for much of that trip, I wold take her photo so that I could prove that I was there. Since then she’s become my travelling mascot. 

Anyway this lady came over to give Kally a pat and say that she loved bears, and I told her the above story. 

While we were waiting for the train from Onehunga yesterday evening, we heard the train coming. What was eerie, apart from sitting on a dark platform at night, was that although there was a man standing on the platform blocking my view of the oncoming train. I could see its lights through him. What was actually happening, I finally worked out, was that the train (railcar) was travelling from left to right. Its lights were reflecting in the glass panel on the right side of the shelter and then those reflections were reflecting into the glass panel on the left… Right where the man was standing. 

Further to our room last night. I managed to sleep, although D.C. reckoned she couldn’t sleep at all. I could hear that she was blocked up when I finally finished my blog and cuddled down and then during the night I heard her give three snores. She told me this morning that she heard them too. 

Also, a couple of times during the night, she reached out for her torch so she could see what the time was… and touched my bed. Which tells you how close we were. I reckon the room (without the bathroom) was about as long as our bach – ten foot, and about eight feet wide.

Because there wasn’t enough room to swing Kally I let her get up first to have her shower; rhat’s D.C., not Kally. I think I told you that the bathroom was only big enough for the toilet and hand basin. The shower cubicle was the entire floor partitioned by only a shower curtain. 

The whole floor was awash by the time she’d finished. Including the toilet roll. The toiletroll holder didn’t have anything to keep the roll in place, and one overly enthusiastic tug was likely to send it flying. Which had happened. It’s amazing how heavy toilet rolls are when they are sodden. Fortunately D.C. had discovered the spare rolls earlier. 

And the only way to dry the floor was with the towels. 

Yesterday we thought we’d found a place to store our cases. In a little alcove in the bathroom. That was until I saw (while sitting on the toilet) that there were a couple of taps on there. It had formerly held the washing machine. In light of the flooding it’s just as well we didn’t put our bags there. 

We did manage to find a place to hang our clothes… 

Breakfast! 

We had several options – like McDonalds 😒, a place next door that had just opened and was offering buy one get one free breakfasts (but they didn’t inspire our tastebuds.) Or the in-house, boxed breakfast $10.50. This was made up of a UHT carton of milk, a same sized carton of Ribena, a bag of cranberry cereal, two biscotti type pieces of ‘bread’, apricot jam, strawberry jam, peanut butter, two sugars, and two biscuits (shortbread in my box, chocolate chip in D.C.’s) As there was nowhere to eat in the room, apart from sitting on the beds, we stayed in the foyer that did have tables and chairs. They also had tea making facilities there; that is an urn of boiling water, sachets of coffee and tea bags, and tins of more teas. The tins sounded more interesting and D.C. decided to have peppermint, while I opted for lemon. 

D.C.’s tin was full of tea leaves and there was no strainer. 

Not that I had better luck. My tin was full of walnut-sized, husky, seed-type things. 

I had peppermint tea. And attempted to strain it through my teeth, which doesn’t work so well because my teeth aren’t the right configuration. i.e. they are crooked. I ended up scooping as many of the floating tea leaves off the top and dumping them into the bowl.  

Now, the cutlery/crockery issue. We were supplied with mugs. Also bowls. And there were knives and forks…. 

Spoons? About three teaspoons and I managed to find a soup spoon for D.C.  

Bread plates? Nope. At least they gave us serviettes. 

We left soon after that. (The food itself wasn’t too bad.) 

 

Inside the lift at the Ibis

 

I think I can see the Marlborough Sounds. 

We went to Camera and Camera to check out monopods again, and had to wait for the store to open, but ended up deciding that I wouldn’t buy one. 

The stop for the Airport Express was almost right outside the shop, so we waited there and tried to work out the correct money - $15 each.

*Whew. I’m now typing this in bed at the Tower Junction Motor Lodge, and I thought I’d lost everything I’d written today.*

Then a taxi pulled up. He’d take us to the airport for $15 each. As it seemed more straight forward than dealing with a bus and struggling with our bags, we accepted his offer. (It may not have been cheaper if we could have got YHA or gold card discounts, but it was still less hassle.)

So we got to the domestic terminal in comfort, paid out our $30, and then went through the saga of checking in our suitcases. It wasn’t really a saga, it’s just a bit daunting when you’re not used to being in that situation.

We decided that we’d better weigh our bags. The carry on luggage had to be under 9kg.

Mine – 6.1 kg

D.C. – 4.5 kg

No sweat. What about our check in bags. This had a limit of 23kg.

Mine – 11.5 kg

D.C. “Mine will be heavier than yours,” said with a grunt has its hefted onto the scales. – 10.4 kg.

Yeah. Right.

Then we did battle with the computerised check in, which wasn’t hard when we took it step by step, and got our boarding passes printed out.

Then we tried to work out where you actually hand over your bags. There was one place that said: “2 baggage check in” so we figured that was for when you were checking in two bags…

Ah, no. “1” was the computerised station. “2” was the baggage check in.

Oh-kay…

Then we sat, and typed, and played games on our respective tablets – Gotta say that these are turning out to be brilliant, value for money purchases. They’re great for taking notes and filling in time.

We finally decided that we had better get some lunch before taking off so we went to a wishbone. I had smoked chicken and kumara salad, with honey-mustard dressing, while D.C. had a sandwich. They were selling porridge, which sounded delicious, except that they’d sold out. So we decided to buy it at the Christchurch airport…

Of course we forgot.

Then we found the access way to gates 22 to 33 (or something), and by doing the New Zealand thing and following everyone else like sheep, we found gate 30.

We sat and played cat-dog-toe on D.C.’s tablet (aka naughts and crosses) until boarding started for our flight. “Would those travelling with young children, groups and those in window seats A and F please board now.”

This was interesting as we’d watched an episode of Mythbusters a couple of weeks ago, where they analysed what was the best way to load a plane. It looked as though we were getting one of the better forms of loading.

And it was good. I was able to get myself sorted knowing that I wasn’t going to be getting into anyone’s way any time soon, and that when I was going to be in someone’s way, that someone was only D.C.

I did manage to sit on my tablet at one point, and wondered why the seat was so hard, but apart from that I had got myself pretty well sorted and was able to direct and help her by the time she arrived.

The take-off was smooth (the runway was bumpier – the actual “wheels leaving the ground” was barely noticeable, although there was one moment when we started climbing proper than I felt the pressure change). Auckland was showery, but I was able to watch the world pass by below us. Then we had to fly up through cloud before emerging into the sun and flying above a cotton wool world.

I love that. I just wish you were allowed to take photos during take-off and landing.

Occasionally I could see the Earth below and I could make out the wave lapping against the coast. I didn’t see any mountains but I knew when we had made it over Cook Strait, as I saw the Marlborough Sounds clearly.

Taken by my tablet's camera

Then the terrain started getting hillier and hillier. Then we could see snow! Lightly powdered snow! It was as if someone had done some baking and had lightly sifted icing sugar over the surface, where it collected in the cracks in the cake.

As we drew closer to Christchurch the cloud (?) rolled in beneath us. We were descending at that point, so I couldn’t take photos, but it was lovely to see the cotton wool blanket with an occasional hill poking through.

The landing was as smooth as the take-off.

We managed to get lost in the airport, but eventually discovered that the “Baggage re-claim” was actually where you claimed it the first time. We were riding down the lift in time to see a certain pink suitcase disappear back into the loading dock.

So we managed to collar a certain blue suitcase, before the pink one. And left the building.

Ah! So this is what winter is supposed to be like!

We put our jackets on and then we caught the shuttle to the Tower Junction Motor Lodge - $29 for the two of us.

The owners of the Motor Lodge appear to be a young Chinese couple, who were very eager to help us. This evening, when they found out we were going to catch the train tomorrow, they offered to give us a lift with other passengers who were staying here. We decided that we’d walk, since we’d already done a bit of a recce this afternoon. They also had accepted delivery of the box, and we were very relieved to find that it had arrived safely. Thanks T, Ron and Jude.

We wandered down to “The Hub”. (I must be the only person who uses hardware stores as landmarks. “There’s Bunnings… There’s PlaceMakers… There’s Mitre 10, but we’ll ignore that because they don’t buy our wheelbarrows.”

On the way we passed a cyclist, standing in the middle of a chalked square outline, talking to a lady. As we got closer it became obvious that he had blood on him, and that a sign was lying flat, rather than vertical. Clearly he’d been in an accident, but he seemed fine, so we kept on walking. We looked back later and there was an ambulance there, so maybe he wasn’t as fine as we thought. But there’s no way he could have flattened that sign. The concrete was lifted out of the ground.

The last time we were staying in the area (we were trying to work out when that was and failed) we had a couple of nice meals at the Speights Ale House. Then the grounds about it were nearly bare. Now it’s crammed into The Hub complex.

By now the air was filled with a constant misty, drizzly rain. We wanted to get our bearings and find the bus stop, so we wandered past The Hub and found one. The next bus was the “Orbiter”, which does a constant loop around the outside of the CBD area. So we got on that.

My bearings are still rolling around all over the place, and we only knew where we were by the names of familiar suburbs, but it was interesting in that we saw parts of Christchurch that we might not have otherwise seen.

There’s a house with a brick chimney that terminates to an obviously new piece of corrugated iron…

Is that verge muddy because it’s winter or because of liquefaction?

Are these road works (sorry, “pavement rehabilitations”) planned or unplanned?

Is that house new because it was due to be built, or because it HAD to be built?

We had no way of knowing. But then it started becoming more obvious that we were heading into the areas that were badly hit by the earthquakes.

Propped up walls…

Boarded up windows…

Empty shops…

Empty houses…

Empty sections…

And then we were travelling along Avonside and we had no doubts that this was a red zone.

There was a lot more tagging in this area, as there was in Shirley (Bunnings!). I guess some people felt they had nothing to be proud of.

By the time we’d completed the loop we’d been in the bus for well over an hour. As we had nothing planned and no way of getting there, it was a well spent $3.40 (for me – Gold card lady got on for nothing).

We decided to try the Speights Ale House again, both deciding on having the Black Cherry Chicken. I think the chef must have been trying to catch the chicken, either that or he was off picking the cherries himself. At least two tables that had ordered after us were served before us. But it was a very nice, filling, meal, and dessert wasn’t an option.

Then we walked back to the Motor Lodge, I had a shower (nice, but the temperature kept fluctuating) and we went to bed. We had ordered a twin room, but we’ve wound up with one king sized. It’s going to be another ‘good’ night’s sleep.