Dizzy In Oz: New Zealand part 1

A must when you spend some time in Australia is of course to go to New Zealand. Since you need some time, at least two weeks I would say, we decided to do it during the Christmas/ New year leave. This is also a good time since it's the middle of the summer and NZ is much cooler than Australia.
as you probably know NZ consist of two islands and we decided to fly in to Christchurch on the the South island to then 15 days later fly home from Auckland on the North island.

This time is a popular travel period so to save costs we flew out on Xmas day which is not that popular bud didn't really matter to us. It turned out to have some drawbacks. The flight went well but when we arrived the staffing at the border control was obviously minimised due to the holidays so to get through took like forever. Once there we got the rental car pretty swiftly and stred driving towards Christchurch city. We immediately discovered that everything was closed, also the bigger supermarkets. Also the restaurants that we passed were all closed. Well, we thought the motel can probaly direct us somewhere to find something to eat. Haha when we came to the motel the reception was locked and there was just a sign saying "Krusenvik room 1".
Anyway after cruising around for a while we eventually found a turkish restaurant that was open. Not cheap but really good food for a hungry family. Thanks Topkapi!

So what was the first impression of NZ. Actually it was a bit like coming home! The air was light and easy to breath. There were birches in the parks and along the roads. The birds were singing instead of screaming like in Aussie and it was of course much cooler, around 20 degrees.
It's said that Christchurch was once a pretty and beautiful little city. The big earthquake in 2011 changed everything. Many of the buildings were destroyed and most of them are still not rebuilt. Unfortunately it seems that it was the ugly buildings that withstood the quake the best. To be honest there is not too much to see or do in Christchurch unless you are particularly interested in cities destroyed by quakes. The botanical garden though was a jewel.
We stayed one night in Christchurch. The next morning the supermarkets were open again so we could go out and buy some breakfast before heading of south to the next planned stay. A night at a small farm outside a village called Geraldine was in the itinerary.
However things didn't turn out as expected...

Cheers