After several hours of flying from Perth and Melbourne, we arrived to New Zealand! We are in the South Island or Te Waipounamu as it is called in Maori language and in the town of Christchurch. Christchurch is mostly famous for the strong earthquakes that hit the area in 2010 (7.1 magnitude) and 2011 (6.3 magnitude) leaving 186 people dead and a big part of the city destroyed. Honestly this fame did not seem to be so interesting for this city, but two days that we spent in it were not that bad.

The first evening we were so tired after the two flights that sleeping early was the best thing we could do. The exploration of the city had to wait for the following day.

The centre is dominated by the ChristChurch Cathedral, whose towering spire and stained-glass rose still lie in ruins. There is an outline of how the central square looked like before the earthquakes and you can only try to compare it with today, noticing the big gaps and the buildings that are missing. A bit further away are the beautiful botanic gardens and Hagley Park. I really enjoyed running through the different paths to see the names and the origin of the tall and magnificent trees or going around the rose garden exploring the various species. In Hagley Park it was nice to walk along a green avenue surrounded by trees on our way to the southern suburb of Addington, where we had a very delicious marrocan wrap for lunch.

In the afternoon we visited the Canterbury Museum which was amazingly interesting. The first part is about the native population and the long extinct bird Moa, a big flightless bird native in New Zealand. Unfortunately, this big bird was friendly and not afraid of humans so you can imagine its destiny. We only saw skeletons, eggs and pictures of this giant bird in the museum. But they had a couple of big representations of the way the local natives were living, before English and other settlers arrived to disturb everything for ever. But the museum is not only about extinct birds and civilisations. There is a part dedicated to the Antartic exploration with a bust of Ammudsen and the vehicles that were used compared to the contemporary ones. Then there is a part about fauna in nice categories. And one about fossils and dinosaurs, with a big allosaurus skeleton, as well as one about Egypt with a mummy :)

All in all I enjoyed the walk in Christchurch a lot!