Day 27
A free night overlooking the coast in Timaru was greeted by another lovely sunny day and the 200Km drive to our final destination in NZ, Christchurch. But not before a quick detour to Caroline's Bay to say a final farewell to Percy and Co!!! An easy, flat, straight and somewhat boring drive on State-highway 1 to Christchurch took a few hours (remember we were used to a 'wow factor' view at every turn!) arriving at our final Top 10 holiday park to enable us to 'sort out' for leaving NZ and to briefly explore Christchurch. In the afternoon we jumped onto the blue line bus into the city centre. Our driver, Barbie, was a bit of a racer, the only way to explain the journey is when someone pressed the buzzer to get off instead of slow and pull into bus stop she sped up and braked hard before hitting the curb!! Anyway, we arrived safely and were helped at the station to navigate ourselves around the city. We knew that Christchurch is in a state of rebuild from a series of earthquakes with the Feb 2011 to be the most tragic and destructive but it's not until you actually wander around and see the demolition areas, the monuments and memorials that you can put it into perspective. The main shopping area is now shops constructed of shipping containers whilst rebuild takes place adjacent and the Cathedral is cordoned off with massive steelworks supporting the structure that remains. About a 5 minute walk away is a 'Transitional Cathedral' made out of recycled materials and is known as the cardboard cathedral. None the less impressive how the City tries to rebuild it is still far from complete and reminds us how tragic those events were. We jumped back on our bus and made our way to a shopping precinct near the Holiday Park to get a nice meal and we definitely 'filled our boots' at Lone Star restaurant! Returning back to Bruce at a reasonable hour we decide to watch one of the 2 DVDs we hadn't watched.... So we completed our day bawling our eyes out at a film based around 9/11. Safe to say a traumatic day!