Picking up the pieces

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Rubble of Christchurch

By noon, we’ve dropped off our rental and Kristy’s friend Heather, who we stayed with in Wellington, is there to pick us up in her rental. She’s down on the South Island for her flounder research. She drops us off at Chester St. Backpackers, a cute and homey place, brightly colored Victorian style with flowerbeds in front and a fat cat prowling the perimeters. Its local claim to fame in this region of comfy, home-styled hostels is its car-beque, the front hood of a car set up as a barbeque grill. We’re definitely in the funky part of town with brightly colored older homes, spruced up to attract the young, hip, and loose.

We decide to wander to the City Centre to see what’s become of Christchurch after its devastating February earthquake. Our conference in Aukland had originally been organized to be in Christchurch but the earthquake rocked that out of possibility. Our hostel is only a few blocks from the heart of the City and after about four blocks or so, we are quickly rebuffed by chain link fences, barricaded streets, construction bulldozers pushing around rubble. The map in my Lonely Planet does us little good. We have to zigzag and cut back and there are graffitied signs everywhere saying “X business moved to Y place.” We get close enough to the Centre at one point to attempt a peek at the famous Cathedral Square where the beautiful 1880’s era Christchurch Cathedral stood. But we’re not close enough and all we see through the chain-link are downed buildings and one crane that has a grey angel lifted high onto it. They’re still actively taking down unsafe buildings. Our mood depresses as we realize just how thoroughly the heart of this city has crumpled. We can find no restaurants on foot until we wind all the way back to our hostel and there’s one little funky café around the corner from our hostel. I see one brief shaft of light amidst the wreckage: a "Greening the Rubble" sign that proudly claims the bared spot the new home for an urban garden. A lot of folks may have moved away but not all have given up on this stately but lively city.

Scientific escape

When Heather says that she has some flounder data to collect and asks if we want to join her, Kristy and I readily agree. We want to get away from the City Centre area. So we head south to Lyttleton, a village that has been sucked into Christchurch’s sprawl. We find ourselves in the detached back of a refrigerated semi-truck with crates of dead fish taking pictures and tissue samples of 100 specimens of flounder (2 species.) Three hours of sunshine slip by as each of us gets into the repetitive, intense pace of data collection. Heather wants to work quick because she’s here at the grace of a private fisherman who’s agreed to let her rummage through his flounder catches to collect these sample. He wants to go home at 5 so we work with only one 5-min break to get her enough samples. By the end, we’re thoroughly frozen and I’m strangely ravenous.

We look forward to a small-town eatery but there’s naught but a fast-food type of fish n’ chips place left in the two-and-half blocks of downtown Lyttleton. The eateries listed in my Lonely Planet are now empty spaces with cleared rubble. The earthquake shook this port village up too…

After driving back into Christchurch and trying to find some interesting place to eat, we end up in Hell. We’re chowing down pizza in one of New Zealand’s most famous national chains. It’s kitschy but with a good sense of humour. It’s been a chain since 1996. We have a Purgatory Pizza and take the leftovers home in a cardboard coffin after nibbling our mis-fortune cookies. The hostel is relatively quiet and Kristy and I have a big alpine hike the next day so it’s early to bed, early to rise!

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Photos

Picking up the pieces
Folks just stand by and watch the bulldozers at work. Something so...unsettling about that. What a sad way to while away the time.

Beautiful graffiti
Part of the funky attitude in the Christchurch hostel area

Angel in the midst
Closest we got to the City Centre