We arrived early in Christchurch this morning, and 5 of us booked a private tour of the southern alps with Brent, a owner of Christchurch Taxi Tours. Ruth, Pat, Victor, Sharon and I had a lovely day outside the city enjoying the majestic mountains that separate the east and west of the South Island.

To get to the alps, we drove through Christchurch. It’s the second largest in New Zealand, it suffered a disastrous 7.1 earthquake in 2010 and then thousands of aftershocks followed the main one. The most damaging one occurred six months later (6.3) destroyed 80% of the city. Brent’s house had damage but it was repairable. Some neighborhoods were completely destroyed. Many buildings collapsed or were significantly damaged in the quake, among them Christchurch’s iconic ChristChurch Cathedral.

The main quake occurred as a result of strike-slip faulting within the crust of the Pacific plate, near the eastern foothills of the Southern Alps at the western edge of the Canterbury Plains. Brent shared that a lot of seismologists have studied the quake. One unique occurrence was when the soil behaved like a liquid. Pressures generated during the earthquake forced underground water and liquefied sand to the surface. It’s like a sand volcano, and destroyed homes.

As first time visitors to the area, the city looks new. Streets after street contains retail stores, businesses were everywhere. There are lots of parking lots, where buildings used to be.

We drove through the longest tunnel in New Zealand (1.97 km long and built in 1964). there are 3.4 million Italian tiles were used to build the tunnel. And it experienced no damage during the earthquake. When leaving the city, we entered the countryside and could see the Alps in the distance. The fields were peppered with sheep, cows and hay bails for winter. It snowed within the last week so the mountain peaks were topped with snow. We made a slow climb to Arthurs Pass passing through rich farm land peppered with cows, sheep and hay bails on the Canterbury Plains. We…

• Stopped in Springfield for a comfort stop
• Visited the Rewi Ally Memorial
• Climbed through Porters Pass and passed our first lake, Lake Lyndon
• Stopped to check out Castle Hill – The hill was named because of the imposing array of limestone boulders in the area reminiscent of an old, run-down stone castle. Rumor on the street is that in 2002 the Dali Lama called this area the spiritual center of the universe
• Passed Lake Pearson
• Travelled along side the Waimakariri River, but because it’s the end of summer here, it looked more like a stream
• Stopped to look at the Otira Viaduct, which was really only a road, and looked for the Kea bird and didn’t see any.
• Visited the Devils Punchbowl Falls – This spectacular waterfall (131m) can be seen from the main road but a walk to the base of the waterfall is well worth doing even if we didn’t have the time to do the whole trail.
• Ate lunch at the Wobbly Kea – had meat pies for lunch. Funny story, in the bathroom there were two photos of keas, so Pat and I took some photos of them since we couldn’t see them in person. While there, I snapped a selfie,
• Returned to the ship

MyLisa, Carol, George and mom did two other tours today 1)Tour of Christchurch and Monvale Gardens then 2)Punting on the river. The punting was like a gondola in Venice where the boat fit 8 people and the person steering the boat was in the back.

We had an amazing dinner at the Chefs Table featuring a tasting menu with Asian cuisine. Then MyLisa and I had a Nordic spa treatment, and now as lazy blobs we head to bed.