Canucks → Kiwis: Christchurch

This weekend we drove down to Christchurch for the Banff Mountain Film Festival. We had tickets to both nights (Friday and Saturday night), but that still left plenty of time in the day for exploring the city. This was my first visit to Christchurch, though Scott has somehow already visited 3 times during various friend airport pick-ups/drop-offs (remember, only 3 people fit in our van..).

As you most likely are aware, Christchurch has suffered from a number of recent earthquakes, the most destructive one in February 2011. Luckily the aftershocks have died down by now, and it's happy to see how the citizens have returned to their regular lives. Though the city itself is still left with a lot of destruction, including massive damage to the downtown core.

There's still lots of snow remaining from the storm a few days earlier. I was surprised that Christchurch had a lot of snow still in the city! Our first day there was pretty overcast, but this was perfect because we wanted to see Prometheus! Scott has been excited for this movie for a long time, so we had to take advantage of being in a city with a proper theater and see it. Overall I really enjoyed it, though there were definitely a few plot holes that left me feeling a bit unsatisfied.

We had a wonderful time visiting Christchurch and definitely made the most of our trip! Full details in the upcoming posts :)

View from Kaikoura of the inland mountains is clear, but why not the coastal ones?

Pretty view of the mountains off in the distance over the plains.

And one more pic for good luck.

Good thing we got new tires for the van! We can barely remember how to drive on snow, haha

Dexter remembers this white stuff too!

King of the Castle!

Saturday was beautiful and sunny, so we started our day with a stroll around the downtown area. As I mentioned, much of downtown is closed but there is a cool area called "Re:START" where they are putting up shops in shipping containers. Really neat! More info here and here.