#36 - Christchurch and Greymouth

It was just after midnight on November 14, 2016 when the Kaikoura quake hit and shook the earth for about two minutes at a magnitude of 7.8, the strongest ground movement ever recorded in NZ.  The train tracks that connected Picton in the north with Christchurch farther south were severely damaged and it was only a couple of months ago that the Coastal Pacific scenic train has been back on the tracks carrying passengers.  So we’re really fortunate to be able to glide along these tracks today for 6 hours taking in the magnificent views of the beaches and coast in the east and the mountains in the west.

Photo from Internet showing the tracks shifting to the left and heading out to sea after the earthquake

It’s hard to imagine that over the course of just 2 minutes, 110 km of coastline experienced an uplift of almost 20 feet.  Some areas that were flat water beaches are now surfing areas.  A new lake, “Quake Lake”, was created by a 150 meter landslide that dropped into the Hanukkah river.  Changes to the land and tide cycles have significantly changed the habitat for many shore dependent species including seabirds and sea life.

One of the big challenges of the restoration was managing the dense seal population along the coast.  More than 13,000 seals, both adults and pups, have been carefully moved by seal handlers.  Over 2300 fish from 13 native species were moved into different sections of their same home stream.

                                          Views from the train from Picton to Christchurch

Another earthquake severely damaged buildings in Christchurch in 2011 and resulted in the loss of 185 lives and almost 2000 injuries, some of them very severe.  We took a tram, akin to a San Francisco cable car, around the city and almost all the commentary was related to which buildings were destroyed in the quake and the massive and very expensive efforts underway to this day to rebuild and restore.   We’re talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring back this wonderful city.

   The 2011 earthquake destroyed the spire and part of the tower,
and severely damaged the rest of the Christchurch Cathedral 

Jeff and I had another “first” while here in Christchurch.  We went punting.  Read it again.  Not hunting but punting, on the Avon River.  Get rid of any image you have of white river rafting and replace it with an oversized canoe floating (merrily, merrily) gently down the stream.  Our cushioned seats were low to the water and our punter stood at the back paddling our punt along so we didn’t have to do a lick of work.

Dozens of ducks came up right along side us putting on a show, tipping upside down most of the time in search of their dinner in the shallow waters.  Most of my photo captions could read “Bottoms Up”.

We had planned in advance to take the TranzAlpine train from Christchurch over the Southern Alps to Greymouth, a small town on the west coast of the South Island.  We anticipated fantastic views of the mountains and it did not disappoint.  When driving, only the passenger gets to really enjoy all the views so we found the perfect solution - the train for this type of terrain.

We experienced typical weather in this region where we had clear skies and sunshine, then rain, then cold, and finally hot weather all in the same day depending on our elevation.  There is a section we went through that gets an average of 200 inches of rain a year.

When we got to the west coast it was warm and sunny and we enjoyed lunch before re-boarding the train for the return trip to Christchurch.  It’s usually about 5 hours in each direction, but the engineer explained that we needed to slow down for a portion of the return because the tracks were “hot”.  It seems that when the steel tracks reach a temperature of 40 degrees C they can buckle along this certain stretch of the journey.  I’m not sure what we’d do if that happened.  There’s no cell reception up here in the middle of the Alps.  “Okay, everybody off the train.  Free ride to anyone who can straighten the tracks.”