We awoke to a gorgeous sunny morning. Under door number 18 of our advent calendar was a bell. After brekky we decided to go and have a ride on the Christchurch Gondola which was about a fifteen minute drive away from the camp site in the Port Hills. The area around the camp site and the suburbs around the Port Hills were very badly affected by the earthquakes and the roads were in a bad condition. We saw on the way there many houses which have had to be abandoned. The Gondola has only recently reopened and we watched the cable cars soaring up to the top of the Port Hills, a collapsed crater rim of an extinct volcano. We were soon in a cable car of our own being whisked steadily upwards. It was a fun ride and took about ten minutes to reach the top from where we had a panoramic view down to the city centre and the ocean on one side and the Lyttelton Harbour on the other. During the earthquakes large boulders were dislodged from the hillsides here and came crashing down into houses below. The harbour waters were a lovely vivid blue and the countryside was golden and rather beautiful. Once we had been safely deposited back down at the bottom of the hill we went to Pak n Save and then we headed back to the camp site. We chilled out in the sunshine for the rest of the day.