After the arrival in Christchurch the security checks passed by quite fast this time, but most likely because it was 5am. So well, after we were security checked, telling them what kind of food we imported and showed our lately cleaned tracking boots (New Zealand is quite free of pests and tries to stay like that), we were finished. It was even so early that there was neither a bus nor anything else going to the city, why we took a comfortable bench at the airport and Kerstin had a nap. After all that we drove to the city centre where we walked around a bit until our host Chris picked us up around lunch time. As we couldn’t find a couchsurfing host, we signed up for HelpX. The idea is quite easy: for four hours of work a day one gets food and accommodation. Chris and Glen accepted our request for a one week stay and the start in New Zealand couldn’t have been any better. Our main job was to walk the three cute dogs Molly, Tessa and Casper along the beach, which is quite hard to explain as a job and it was more fun anyway. After we picked up the leash the three got crazy excited started barking 🙂 The second job was to weed the former vegetable garden, meaning that we had to remove everything what we could find. After we finished that after 4 days Chris asked us to remove the whine leafs at her fence which came over from the neighbour’s garden. An easy job and it was even quite funny. For all that we got super delicious food, starting with chicken, fish & chips and Glen even got some Crayfish and baked vegetables of course with the beloved sweet potato (Kumara). Both did this so well, they should think about opening a restaurant 🙂
Of course, we wanted to explore Christchurch itself as well. We heard of the bad earthquakes in Christchurch (between 2010 and 2011), the worst was exactly 4 years ago in February. We were really surprised that there is still so much visible of it. A lot of empty buildings, which were neither knocked down nor rebuilt, half demolished buildings being supported, everywhere construction sites, very often changing detours and lots of free areas on which there were once buildings and are used now as parking spots. Ones, even our bus that we took to go to the city had to pull over, because there was apparently a new detour he didn’t know about. Nevertheless the people seem to gather courage again and also see the chance to give the city a new surface. One can see this at various Street Arts around the city (which somehow was reminiscent of Melbourne) and the newly built ReStart Mall which consists of containers including nice cafés and other shops. A very cool spot in “new Christchurch”! Beside a self-guided tour through the city and the botanical garden Chris and Glen took us on a little road trip to show us around Christchurch and Littleton. This gave us a first impression about the roads in New Zealand: windy and hilly. Once we reached the top we had a phenomenal view over Christchurch! We also met Sarah, an exchange student from Ohio we got in touch with through couchsurfing and participated a couchsurfing event in order to gain some contact with Kiwis.
Of course we also had to plan how our journey should continue. Chris helped us a lot with that by taking a map and marked everything we need to see on the South Island which gave us a proper route. After we read all of our guide books we saw that she included everything and therefore she planned the perfect route for us, just awesome these Kiwis 🙂 We also thought about our type of transportation, mainly if we wanted to hitchhike or buy a car. Glen was our hero when he drove us around to several car dealers for almost the whole afternoon, but unfortunately there was nothing which met our requirements. That’s why we decided to start hitchhiking and keep our eyes open in the next bigger cities. Suddenly the week in Christchurch was over and our journey through New Zealand began with the world famous metropole, Twizel…