Christchurch - A city in Recovery.

Hi y'all,

We started the day off wrong. Somehow, we are still not sure how, but our tour left without us. 😳. But to our rescue was the lovely Lizzy who works for the tour company. She loaded us up in her personal car and gave us a private tour until we caught up with the bus. What a hero!!

Before I talk about our day, let me explain the title. This city had a horrific earthquake in 2011 that cost 275 lives , a downtown and an enormous amount of homes. They are still trying to recover from it and there are signs of the devastation and the rebuilding everywhere. Our guide was so knowledgeable about the geological issues that caused the most damage and also passionate about the love of his city.

Chris: Our guide really was very very good and I found the science behind the earthquakes facinating. They have an underground natural aquifer that provides the South Island with most of their drinking and agricultural irrigation water. The earthquake caused the ground to undulate up and down in a wave line fashion and this in turn caused a pump like phenomenon that brought the water from the aquifer up thru the subsurface shale and soil. Water and mud was gushing up out of the ground for weeks, that turned the surface into a quicksand like substance and entire two story houses and buildings sunk beneath the surface. When the phenomenon first started geologists understood it but the population had to be educated. There were people in their cars that came upon it and thought it was water and mud on the road. They drove into it never to be heard from again. How absolutely horrific.

This geologic phenomenon has a name and I was determined to remember it and I did until I didn't. But the point of this is not an academic paper on the geology of earthquakes but rather our recollection of what our guide was telling us on a Viator tour. And from what I remember he said, this rising aquifer water has only been witnessed by modern geologists a handful of times. I think, I think ? he said it was more a geological theory but it happened in a big way in Christchurch.

The guide made the point several times that when he and others reference, the earthquake, what they really mean is the earthquakes. In actuallity, there were over five thousand earthquakes over six months. The one that did the overwhelming amount of damage was a Richter scale seven earthquake that lasted over a minute and apparently that is an eternity for an earthquake. He said most are five to ten seconds as I remember. The duration was more destructive than the intensity.

The majority of the central business district was destroyed along with thousands of homes. Several areas have been labeled red districts and rebuilding is prohibited due to the instability of the land and the continued threat of the rising aquifer water. We drove along one coastal highway with a beautiful beach on the left and mountains on the right. Before the earthquakes the mountains came down to the road's edge but now they are 150-200

feet from the road, the mountain just crumbled and cascaded into the sea and onto the beach. A lot of the bus size boulders were just left on the beach and it was actually quite beautiful. Nature is incredible and powerful to say the least.

Rhonda :

This time we actually did the botanical gardens and they were beautiful. It's wonderful that they are free to the public too.

We enjoyed the bus tour of the downtown. Downtown was hardest hit and it was cordoned off for over two years while the city council decided how to approach rebuilding. They decided to rebuild in a very organized way , They made sections like the medical section, the entertainment section, the judicial section , etc. What has been rebuilt is amazing. More to do though. We will come back here at the end of our trip for 4 days so I will go more into all of it then.

We had lunch at the River Market. It's a cool area downtown that was just food trucks during the renovation but now is a huge indoor market.

After lunch we dropped off half of the people' at a wildlife sanctuary and the rest of us went to the Alpine jet thrills loading dock. This was a dude who had a jet boat. There was no office, no safety gear, No slickers. We threw on life vests. And we were off.... and omg!! It was 50mph up the river then he did the 360 finger motion and then we did an exhilarating 360 Turn. That happened many times and it was sooooo amazing!

We are having a blast! Love y'all.