We had big plans for Tongariro this weekend, but by mid week we scrapped them for a last minute business trip to Christchurch. Josh is visiting the office now and I’m sitting in the Hummingbird Café, enjoying some much needed coffee and shade among the brightly painted shipping containers of the Re:Start Mall. It’s a gorgeous day, full of intensity and warmth tempered by a fresh, icy breeze. Knowing how close we’ve come to Antarctica, I like to imagine the wind skirting over glaciers on its way to blow past our faces. The mall I’m in was built to replace a shopping area that was destroyed after the 2011 quake: a short-term solution to a problem—but to my eye it’s one of the most vibrant spots in the city. It gives a badly needed sense of renaissance in a city that still feels mostly like rubble. From what I’ve gathered progress has been slowed by disagreements over how money should be spent and over the vision of the city’s future as a whole. It’s a question I can understand: when something so central to your identity has been destroyed, which impulse do you feed? Do you fight to get back what you once had, knowing that it might be an impossible dream? Or do you wipe the slate clean and build something new, risking that it may never equal what you once loved? The choices we are given in the face of loss are always emotional, and never clear-cut.
As it is now, it’s a city of contrast: it has beautiful parks, lovely historical spots, and lively street art right alongside piles of rocks, heavy construction, and ugly dystopian grey buildings. Our hotel was next to a beautiful mural (which I forgot to take a picture of), but the surrounding flat-faced buildings (which felt ripped from the paged of 1984) spoiled the effect. Come on ChCh, at least paint them a nice color.
On Saturday we traveled south, and just as the last bits of urban sprawl seemed to be petering out, we drove through a tunnel. Christchurch is very, very flat, so when we came to the mountains south of it and drove through to Lyttleton on the other side, we felt like we’d traveled through a portal. We’d just been in a city built on plains that stretch far into the distance, but now we were teleported to a mountainside harbor town, with steep, narrow, serpentine roads and a harsh, industrial beauty that Josh was in love with. Judging by the mammoth piles of tree trunks, logging seems to be a big industry here. Here's a shot of the town from high up in the scenic reserves, looking more classically picturesque.
We also spent some time getting to know the city center a bit. The first day we explored on foot and then spent a lot of the second seeing it all again by tram, just to add in a little 20s era nostalgia. We lucked into some seats on the evening dinner tram, which was pricey but a lot of fun! We must have circled the track five or six times during the course of the meal, and it was cool to watch the light change in all these little bits of the city as we rolled along into dusk.
A lot of people I’d talked to before coming here told me how depressing they found Christchurch, and I can see where they’re coming from--but it's also exciting. The city's got good bones, even if it is still half skeleton. It's clear from what's there that it was once something special, and judging from the energy that's poking through the cracks in the cement, it has the potential to be something pretty special again.
A lot of people I’d talked to before coming here told me how depressing they found Christchurch, and I can see where they’re coming from--but it's also exciting. The city's got good bones, even if it is still half skeleton. It's clear from what's there that it was once something special, and judging from the energy that's poking through the cracks in the cement, it has the potential to be something pretty special again.