Arrived into Christchurch on the 27th and had a very lovely first few days staying with a couple of H’s friends, Jacob and Adele in their beautiful countryside home.
Felt slightly bad for gate crashing their family Xmas but was rather nice to be shown around town, a farmers market and the Banks Peninsula. Stunning weather, better than miserable BBC predicted so already red of cheek, and that was before the dinner drinkies…
Rather sobering though to still see the devastation left by the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and hear of the several hundred people who died, some of whom they knew personally
Left yesterday and drove north to Kaikoura, where we headed out for a boat trip and whale watch. Found a – rather sleepy – humpback quite close to the coast and two types of much more playful dolphins.
Checked in to our first hotel, wooden built simple Kaikoura Boutique Hotel, ten yards from the water’s edge of a huge long beach.
All going well till last night, when at 2am we were woken by the long looping sound of an air raid warning going off through the town.
Absolutely terrified as we thought it was a tsunami warning, which, given the recent volcanic eruption in White Island, and the many conversations about the Christchurch earthquakes, suggested a high possibility of a further major event.
I looked out of our curtains and of course could not see if the sea was still there as it was pitch black. Opened our room door to see if anyone else was scrambling out and heading for their car to escape, as this building is made of matchsticks. Wracked our brains wondering where the nearest high ground was. And thought – SHIT.
luckily, I had earlier looked in the back of the hotel book and thought I’d seen something In there. Which, thank goodness, I had – turns out the siren is to alert the firefighters to a call out, and was not a tsunami alert. But we were rather wide eyed heading back into bed, and it was definitely not our best nights sleep so far! X