March 31. After a calm night we woke up a couple of hours north of Christchurch so we felt quite refreshed. We went separate ways for the day’s activities, Jo on a double decker bus trip with a woman she has met from Glenelg while I took a combined coach, 4WD, jet boat trip.

Christchurch is an amazing city where 70% of the buildings in the CBD and hundreds more in the suburbs were destroyed by an earthquake in Feb 2011, after the city had been badly shaken and weakened by early another quake 3 months earlier. It is thought that the second quake was an after shock of the first one, which was stronger but further away so it did little damage. The second quake killed 185 people, 167 in one building. The government, city council and especially the citizens have shown tremendous resilience to redesign, rebuild and rehabilitate the city to its now vibrant state. It is now a beautiful, modern city and its inhabitants are very proud.

Jo’s tour was in a double deck bus through the city and suburbs, showing a mixture of new and restored buildings, interspersed with buildings still derelict, beautiful gardens and vacant land, much of which will remain as green space.

My excursion was more adventurous. It started with a 1.5 hour drive through Christchurch suburbs then into the foothills of the alps to a sheep station in the Waimakariri valley. The guide was good and the drive interesting. The working sheep station has a busy tourist business offering both 4WD tours, jet boat rides and a nice lunch. The jet boat ride was exciting and well worth the trip. The river was fast flowing between steep cliffs and with a very rocky bottom. Often it is very shallow through constantly moving rock beds. The boat drivers are crazy and the boats are fast, powerful machines that can travel in very shallow water so it was great fun.

The 4WD tour was actually in a 20-passenger Toyota Coaster with off-road tyres and higher suspension, taking us along dirt and gravel station tracks. The mountain scenery was interesting, through native forests and pine plantations, with good views over river valleys.

Overall, we had a good day.

April 1. This morning we had an early start to catch a train that picked us up at the wharf for our excursion into the mountains, through the Taieri Gorge. Although the scenery was interesting it was a fairly slow, un-eventful day. The excursion lasted 6 hours and might not have been the best choice. A better option might have been to take the overnight trip to Queenstown in the mountains and get back on board tomorrow.

It doesn’t matter though, because we still enjoyed the afternoon and evening on board.