The aftermath of the earthquakes is still quite visible. We could see a kernel of renovated area, about 1 square kilometre, surrounded by a lot of work to rebuild the whole central Christchurch area (about 6 square km). Still walking around the city is fantastic. We love the street art (mostly mural). They are all different styles, but many are around the kiwi (read: New Zealanders) theme, which means there are a lot of birds. It dresses all the blind walls you see around the city. As you can imagine, there are a lot of them, since many buildings were demolished, leaving previously unexposed walls in the remaining buildings quite visible and numerous.
One of our first stops today was the container mall. Originally called re:Start, it was assembled out of containers after pretty much all the shops in the adjacent mall were demolished by or after the last earthquake. Today, it is really just a token mall and much smaller than it once was. It still reflects the quirky spirit of Christchurch and remains a good place to find something made locally.
We continued our walk and eventually stopped by the Canterbury Museum. The real start of our visit was the National Geographic pictures exposition. It’s a temporary exhibition here until the end of February, showcasing the 50 most iconic pictures from the magazine. We had the chance to see them in large print, along with the story behind how the photographs were taken. It was surprising how many of them were lucky pictures, taken on the last day of the shoot or on an assignment unrelated to the photograph's subject. Since most of them were taken on film, the photographer was surprised by the outcome when the film was developed (often months later). It truly speaks to the world of professional photographers and how they sometimes have to work hard to get the perfect picture; some travelling with more than 10 suitcases of lighting equipment, others spending months in the desert to get the lucky shots, sometimes even blurry.
The last stop of the day was the botanical garden. Like most of the gardens we’ve visited in New Zealand, they must have their own beehives, as they have a lot of bees. The bees in Christchurch love echinacea, as that’s where they seemed to spend all their time. It did give us a chance to take lots of pictures with bees. Other than bees, the garden offered an impressive variety of daisies. It also had many more flowers than the other gardens we visited on this trip. It gave us the impression that it is really focused on having a variety of flowers and displaying them as much as possible. Like every botanical garden, it was a cool spot to sit in the shade and enjoy the wonderful warmth (got to 32°C with clear, deep blue sky).
