After that, we went to Quake City which gives a good overview and explanation of the big earthquake they had more recently, but it was just one in a list of many over the centuries:
many quakes
stone buildings did not fare well, the church was heavily damaged
They have a nice river going across the city and botanical gardens, the avon:
Other city pictures:
8 years later, many buildings are still being fixed
Given that the cathedral was destroyed by the recent earthquake, the transitional cathedral is interesting:
Downtown is otherwise slowly being rebuilt:
A highlight was Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, lots of eager and hungry animals :)
this one got lost
the Keas are quite curious and hungry too if you have food :)
They then had a Maori show, was came from the heart but was not up to the same level than some nicer ones we've seen elsewhere, but it was still nice:
Various dances and demos they did for us:
Jennifer tried their dance, had a few issues with it :)
I'm not sure if I did better, I hope I did :)
And that was it for Willowbank Wildlife Reserve and Ko Tane Maori show and dinner.
During our time in Christchurch, we picked a day with nice weather, and took the Tranzalpine train coast to coast
A local attraction is the Christchurch Gondola, which wasn't bad, but it's a 30mn bus/shuttle ride away: it gives you an elevated view and the option of what looked like a not so stellar hike in high sun, so we ended up skipping that and only spent 1H to get the next shuttle back:
They have a back in time tunnel ride which was ok-ish:
We then had a bit of time left to go through a half hidden science museum: Rutherford's Den in the old university. It was actually quite good and I wish it had been easier to find so we would have scheduled more time for it.
And then, it was time to fly back. I ended up in an AirNZ flight after my United flight was cancelled due to engine trouble before takeoff:
[rigimg:1024:702*|got a "free" stop in LAX, which I usually try to avoid :)]
