The skyline lingers with hundreds of cranes maneuvering, their necks through the clouds in a methodological fashion. The sidewalks downtown are in shambles, as pedestrian paths are barricaded, rerouted, and covered in construction zones by repurposed connex boxes. Buildings hunch over, innards exposed as theirs bricks pile on the ground below, as if the quake had shaken the city the day prior. Behind wooden fences, chain-linked fences, and green mesh barriers, cathedrals and churches stand devastated and forgotten as if the apocalypse had come and gone. "Don't waste your time on Christchurch," I overheard one traveler tell another on a boat in Kaikoura. In a cafe in Lake Tekapo, I heard a German traveler telling another not to bother stopping in Christchurch, "It is just a city demolished by the earthquake," He said. "It will be
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