Akaroa & Christchurch

A friend suggested we visit a small town named Akaroa since we would be travelling to Christchurch (it's only an hour drive away). Best suggestion ever!! It was truly one of the most picturesque places I have ever seen. Tyler isn't one for pulling the car over for nice views, but he pulled over multiple times on our drive to Akaroa (without us even asking)! The pictures are nice, but they really don't capture how beautiful this place really was. The town itself was small and quaint and we just toured around the shops and took in the scenery. There were water sports and boating tours available to see PENGUINS but it was a bit chilly and we didn't have a lot of time. We will definitely need to go back to check out the penguins though :)

Since there had been so much rain in the weeks before we were there, there had been multiple mudslides on the highway. Or as the Kiwi's call them, "slips". Talking with some locals, they said the highway had just been re-opened and if we had tried to come a few days earlier we wouldn't have been able to get through. We really were lucky with the weather. Just a few days could have altered our whole trip.

So beautiful!

Akaroa harbour

Work of art I must say ;)

Touring downtown Christchurch was quite the opposite to the beauty of Akaroa. The city is still majorly rebuilding after the earthquake in 2011. I don't think any of us were expecting to see so many abandoned buildings, piles of rubble and construction sites. It's going to take years to get the city back to what it once was. Through all of their rebuilding efforts they created a few very cool attractions. One was the creation of an outdoor mall built entirely from shipping crates. The "mall" is temporary and was an easy solution for stores to stay in business. If I didn't know it was a temporary fix from the destruction of an earthquake, I would have just thought it was a trendy part of town. There was even a Lululemon! I have to say I came out empty-handed as the prices were quite a bit more expensive than the already pricey Canadian stores.

Shipping crate coffee shop.

Lulu!

One of the sites with the most visible damage was the historical cathedral downtown. The cathedral looked in really bad shape and I think they are still deciding whether or not they are going to spend the money to rebuild or if they are going to tear it down. In the meantime, they built another (much smaller) transitional cathedral using mainly cardboard (pictures below). It was really cool to see in person and this new cathedral is supposed to be earthquake proof.

Original cathedral

Cardboard cathedral

Boarded up college building

One of many construction sites

We enjoyed our time in Christchurch, however I can't see us going back. It's really too bad for the city as the earthquake has probably caused a significant decrease in the amount of tourists it sees. Besides the people I guess who are interested in seeing the damage that is still so prominent. 

Next stop is Kaikoura!