Christchurch, last stop in New Zealand

I was going to make some breakfast for the first time in almost 6 months. The hostel who was one of the two places in town selling groceries didn't have any eggs, so I had to drive over to the other place and buy some. I was planning to make scrambled eggs, but just before breaking the egg shell, I was reminded that I had to clean the pan myself afterwards. So boiled eggs for breakfast, haha
We left Mount Cook village with a perfect view of the mountains in the mirror, the weather this day was probably the best, great day to have been jumping around on the mountain ridge. Next time I guess.
We passed by one of the glacier lakes, Tekapo, super icy blue color. This is kind of a special lake as it is the only place (or at least was) where they successfully have been breeding salmon in huge farms. The taste of the fish should be very unique and special, so since it was on the way, we had to stop and taste. It wasn't that difficult to find the sushi place, just follow all the Japanese people in the little village. Well, we actually still had a problem finding it, because the Japanese people were everywhere, lots of decoys, haha. The sushi was great, nothing to complain about, but I didn't really taste any difference.
We continued towards Christchurch, which was going to be last stop for the both of us. Christchurch was in the news September 2010 when the city was struck by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, which caused quite a lot of damage in the city. For months after there were smaller aftershocks all the time and in February 2011 it was struck by a 6.3 magnitude quake. Even though it was smaller than the previous one it was more intense, 184 people died and lots of the already damaged buildings were not totally destroyed. Big parts of the inner city was blocked off and deemed non-repairable, a lot of buildings had to be demolished.
More than 100.000 people were affected by the damaged and had to leave their homes. More than 10.000 houses was deemed inhabitable, they would have to be demolished and rebuilt. As a result a lot of people left Christchurch for good, leaving a big city with a lot less people than earlier.
Just a month before we arrived there had been another series of earthquakes, but statistically it should not happen while we were going to be there, right?
It was quite depressing driving around the city, felt more like a ghost city than anything else. Everywhere there were damages to be seen to roads, bridges and houses, and at this point it was more than a year ago since the last quake. It was as if nobody was in a hurry to rebuild anything, it might not make sense if there was going to be a new quake soon anyway.
We found a hostel in the part of the city that had been hit the hardest. It looked like a busy beach community, but it was totally dead. Most stores had closed and many of the places had put wooden planks on their facades. A very sad sight.
For dinner we decided to let the GPS guide us to a seafood place, according to the fancy GPS there should be one only a few miles away. When we finally arrived, it seemed like the owner had found better business in Christchurch these days. It took us to a funeral service store, not a good sign. We wanted to keep the theme going for the evening and ended up eat at Hell Pizza, very appropriate we thought, haha
The pizza box was brilliant, as it has a coffin built-in for leftover pizza slices. It popped out of the original pizza box and folded into a cute little coffin, simply genius. On top of that the pizza was probably the best I had been eating for a long time, in fact the first one in many months.
Ryan had to leave the next day, so he was dropped at the airport around lunch time. Goodbye to the Canadian, nice guy, hope to see him again somewhere somehow.
Now McSmarte was all alone again like so many times before. This time though it was in the most depressing place of the entire trip, Christchurch was not much fun. It was raining, cold and windy, reminded me way too much about a certain other country around autumn. I drove around the city to do some more sightseeing, but there wasn't really too much to look at than damages. Even more depressing. Hard to imagine than just a few days ago I was at one of the most impressive and memorable places in New Zealand
This seemed like the perfect time to go back to the hostel and watch a few movies and think about the last month of traveling in New Zealand. Christchurch was definitely not what I wanted to have clearest in my memory when thinking of my travels here.
The next day I drove around a little again, giving it another chance. I wanted to go to the city center and take a closer look at the damages. Just when I parked the car it started pouring down, not just a shower. I went to get lunch instead giving the weather a chance, but ended up going shopping for some food and drinks instead.
I returned the Jucy El Cheapo car, threw out most of the trash that we had collected over the last 4 weeks of driving around. At the bottom of the trunk I found 5 beers, ahh, they are not going to the trash for sure. I handed over the paperwork to the ladies in the store, they went to check out the car for further damages. Lucky for me they didn't say anything about the windshield damage, maybe because it was raining and they didn't want to get wet, haha

I took the shuttle to the airport and here I had to spend the next 16 hours. My flight was early next morning and the car had to be returned today already. I had time to watch a few movies there too, catch up on world news. Didn't want to fall asleep if someone would steal my stuff. The area suddenly filled with lots of people after 8pm and at 10pm the area was flooded with people. The airport security people came and asked people to move all the time as they were laying in front of doors or on the path of evacuation. Also nobody could lay on the floor and sleep, everyone had to sit up... What was all that about?
Finally next morning was there, the flight was ready for boarding and this was the end of New Zealand. Had officially begun the trip back home to San Diego, with a little detour though :-)