Littleton to Littleton

Last night we took a walk to Christchurch City Centre to see the earthquake damage. It really is a disaster. Several blocks of the city are fenced off. Most of the building that are made of brick or stone cannot be occupied and unfortunately many of these buildings are historic landmarks or churches. There are steel butrises supporting many of these building, others have been or will be completely torn down. The major high rise hotel, the catholic cathedral and the new stadium are being torn down and may not be rebuilt in the same location.

We were at breakfast by 8:00 because the bus picked us up at 9:00 to take us to Littleton. On the way we drove through areas were entire blocks of buildings were fenced off and were just waiting to be torn down. Littleton is the harbor town that supports Christchurch. The plan is to do a ride to the other side of the harbor and then take a ferry back to the port. The 18.5 mile ride included rolling hills some that were pretty steep. We missed a ferry by about 10 minutes so we had lunch while waiting the 50 minutes for the next ferry.

We rode the bus to the Adventure South Depot were our bike cases were waiting. In about 2 hours everyone had their bikes packed and ready to go to the airport tomorrow morning. We had our last happy hour and then our final dinner together. The dinner was good but we had competition from another large group so it was very noisey. Mel and Barbara did a special presentation about the trip which was very eloquent and touching. We said farwell to our guides and those that would not be going to the airport in the morning.

This ends the bicycle phase of our New Zealand south island adventure. We bicycled 498 miles.  We will do our best to continue our blog during our 7 day car tour of the north island. Thanks for sharing our adventure.