Christchurch - a Re:START city

(The 13th of Feb to the 17th of Feb)

Started my trip to New Zealand by arriving in the middle of the night at the Christchurch Airport, tried to sleep on the floor of the departure hall but airport staff came and told everyone that we could not sleep on the floor only sit on the seats. I found out that there was a small lounge area but all the space was taken so no opportunity to catch any sleep that night/early morning (00:20am Saturday morning).

I hadn't booked any accommodation in the city due to my early arrival (didn't want to pay 40$ for a hostel bed equal to maybe 4 hours of sleep and 25 $ for a shuttle to the city). So waited until the morning around 8 am and took the airport bus to the city where I could leave my luggage in the storage room at the YHA hostel and after handing in my information and luggage I decided to go into the lounge room and have a cup of tea but immediately fell asleep on a couch in the lounge room. I kinda noticed a lot of people staring at me and talking about why I was sleeping on the couch instead of in a bed but I didn't care, was too tired ;-)

The YHA hostel only had room for 1 night and I had to go online and book a bed in another hostel. The Dorset House hostel, a really cute house turned into a hostel. I had booked a 5 bed dorm room but was fortuned enough to be placed in a 3 bed dorm and had a good sleep. Unfortunately, the hostel only had a bed for that one night and once again I had to look online for another hostel. I didn't expect New Zealand to be sooo busy but later learned that Feb and most of March are very busy months in NZ, tourist wise.

I wasn't really able to plan what to do in Christchurch since most of the day went by tying to find another bed for a few nights so that I could actually plan my trip a bit.

I ended up staying at a bigger hostel (I mostly book smaller hostels because it tends to have a better atmosphere than the bigger ones) called 'All Star Inn' on Bealy Ave which I nearly didn't find due to construction work right in front of the entrance to the hostel - had booked it for 2 nights to get my NZ trip planning started.

The next few days was spent planning my trip/hostel coordination since I had to plan a few days ahead to be able to have an accommodation for the night. I rang the bus company Stray in hopes of being able to board the bus a bit sooner than expected but no such luck. All seats were fully booked until the 23rd of February where I would be able to hop on the bus at the town called Nelson - so booked a seat and was happy finally to have a start date for my bus journey.

In the meantime, I had to buy another bus pass with a different bus company called Naked Bus to be able to get to Nelson. It was a deal with 10 trips for the price of 119 NZ$ - great deal considering that some of the trips between the destinations had a value of 60$ per leg/route.

The most common bus companies in NZ are: Naked Bus. Intercity and the hop on/hop off companies called Stray and Kiwi Experience (Magic bus was bought by Kiwi Experience and is no longer a separate company).

Ohh and almost forgot, I experienced an earthquake which hit Christchurch Sunday the 14th of Feb around 1pm, measured to be a 5.9.

I was on my way from the city to my hostel and suddenly the earth started shaking underneath my feet and I wasn't able to stand still. It was like being in one of those horror houses with rocking pathways (amusement park) and my mind couldn't really place the experience and I actually got a little motion sick. My mind tried to process what had happened but because I had never experienced an earthquake before it had nothing to compare it to and therefore it was a very surreal experience.

Nothing major happened in the city, a cliff collapsed and some minor injuries but the inhabitants of Christchurch were rattled over yet another earthquake. Aftershocks of magnitude 3.5 continued to rumble across the city during the afternoon and a few days after.

What did I then see in Christchurch during my stay - well I visited the botanical gardens, the Re:START container mall (retailers, banks, food carts, coffee shops inside shipping containers founded after the big earthquake in 2011), the Cathedral or what is left of it, and walk around the city.