We arose in our car and stepped out into the cold rushed to the toilet then rushed back to our warm bed and fell back asleep for a bit hoping it would get warmer next time we woke. When we got up properly it was warmer…..but not much. We grabbed lunch, got a shower then drove into the town centre. After doing a couple of U-turns on dead end streets due to the 'Red Zone' (no access zone due to the earthquake) we found the Botanic Gardens, we were guided into a massive field which was packed. We realised we had drove into the parking for a 'International Garden Show'. They charged us $7 for parking which we didn't think was too bad since we would get to see the show. We got to the entrance and saw a sign saying $42 per adult and realised maybe the parking wasn't such a good price after all. We decided to skip the show and had a nice walk around the Botanic Gardens; water garden, New Zealand Garden, Rock Garden, etc, etc.

We then started walking towards the town centre and found that they had just re-opened the 'Canterbury Museum'. We thought we would have a QUICK look around it so headed in. 3 hours later we came out, was a slight bit bigger then we were expecting. We learnt about Maori people, the early Europeans, Fred and Myrtle's Paua Shell House, we saw some cool Costume designs from the WOW Design show, saw their Egyptian Mummy (Tash pen Khonsu), learnt about lots of birds including seeing a few stuffed albatross's, saw some Dinosaur bones, learnt about the Earthquakes and Learnt about exhibitions to Antarctica (while eating a red pear we had bought in a farmers shop). Well worth visiting considering we were struggling to find stuff to do. We then quickly headed back to the car and grabbed the sandwiches before heading back to the town centre. Today was the first day they were allowing people back into the Red Zone to see the damage. We new our mums would tell us off if we went in the danger zone so we…….. went in anyway. We got guided down a fenced off area looking at the ghost street with buildings crumbled and parts falling over, we even saw a recovery crane which had fell forward. It was quite sad hearing all the locals pointing and talking about where stuff used to be. We continued to the end of the walkway and came to the Cathedral, we had already seen the cathedral spire in the museum, but the whole front of the Cathedral had fallen down. We waited there for a bit and then headed back towards the entrance/exit. We then walked through a mall street, which had been built since the quake, they were using large metal shipment containers converted into shops, café's, and banks and all painted cool colours. It was good to see the city growing and coming back to life again after the disaster. It was an interesting but sad experience and if your reading this please just spent a few seconds thinking about all the people who have lost there jobs, businesses and homes due to the earthquake. Even over a year later it is still costing money to re-build and to put people's life back together.

We then took a slow walk back to the car and drove to the cost, we had a quick jump out and walk onto the beach but it was a bit too nippy to jump in the sea. We then jumped back in the car and drove south for a few hours before stopping at a nice little campsite in the middle of no where. It had a farm so we had a look at the animals, watching a sheep butt little piglets out of the way for our attention before there big momma came along. We then made sum grub before relaxing in front of a television for the evening.