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April 16th 2012

Published: April 16th 2012

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Maranade

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Flew over last night from Perth, althought it seems like it was several days ago. A very tiring night with no sleep and arrived at Aucklkand at 2am our time (Perth time and 6am NZ time. the dawn was just breaking into an absolutely beautiful day with clear skies and lots of fog around the hills.

However we were too tired to appreciate it as we had to go thru customs and quarantine and then re check thru domestic terminal to catch our flight to Christchurch an hour later. We had to carry our checked baggage to another section then WALK (stagger and puff!) almost a kilometer along a "green painted line" to the domestic terminal. This is outside along the road, at 3am we were glad it was fine.

The flight down to Christchurch was uneventful and the weather lovely. You could see both sides of the South Is from 36,000ft and the snow on the tops of the rugged mountains in the distance stunning.

We are at present booked into a motel near the airport and as we arrived at 10am (still 6am our time) the room wasn't ready so we had to amuse ourselves til

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2pm to get checked in. The motel owner did come and pick us up in the motel courtesy stretched limo & let us drop our bags of in the office. We then rang our friends Rosemary and Geoff here in ChCh who kindly came out (only live a short distance away) and then drove us around to see the earthquake damage.

We were nearly dead on our feet with having no sleep but soon perked up as we were driven around and wasn't long before the cameras were clicking.

I suppose all the NZ travellers and bloggers who have been here will have seen the same sights but it was a complete shock to us to see the utter devestation of the city area and more so the vast areas of housing now reduced to a "no go zone" with houses tumbling over cliffs like in a quarry and long rows of shipping containers being used to act as retaining walls along the buckled and lumpy roads to stop the sides of hills and rocks falling on the roads.

The once beautiful city centre is now fenced off as a a "no go" and the only sign

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of life inside the fences are the numerous demolition contractors and their machines knocking down the condemned buiuldings. Many such buildings have now been reduced to just bare sites and the city has taken on an appearance of a bare cleared area. Very sad and depressing.

Still, life seems to be going on here amongst the stalwart Kiwis and out where we are staying you would be forgiven for saying "what earthquake?" Our friends place, which is only 5 mins from the airport only suffered a few cracks in their brickwork and the whole area looks normal. Not so the suburbs closer in the city and near the sea where whole hillsides of houses are left deserted and condemned. Some are still lying toppled over the sides of cliffs formed by whole sides of hills shearing away. Frightening.

Just woke up after a great full nights sleep. Rearin' to go....off to pick up the camper this morning and then to the supermart to provision for the next 3 weeks.

Will post a few pics without captions, too time consuming, am sure you will get the idea. You can enlarge the pics by clicking on them.

Til