Today we toured Christchurch. We started out at the Antarctic Center, which has penguins and several displays of the history of the exploration of Antarcitica. New Zealand is one of the best places fly to to head south to the stations on Antarctica. The first photo is us in their Antarctic windstorm. They give everyone parkas, gloves and rubber shoes covers, then they turn down the temperature to about 0 degrees F with the windchill after they have a 20mph windstorm too.
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| Crazy driver in the windstorm |
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| Poor penguins were molting. Not very happy as they cannot swim when molting. Can''t catch a fish for dinner if you can't swim. |
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| A good photo op. |
We headed downtown to see how well Christchurch had recovered from the 2011 earthquake. This quake caused many buildings that didn't have proper earthquake designs to collapse. There were about 200 deaths. The downtown area is just now reopening major stores. The local people are very happy about that. We all took the local trolley. The driver had a great comment: "How many cities have the opportunity to rebuild their town to what they really want?"
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| Trolley ride. |
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| An old church with the bell tower still demolished. Note the supports to prevent more damage. |
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| New memorial park downtown along the Avon River. |
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| The rest of the gang. We made a cookie stop right after this, to help get more smiles again. |
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| At the beach just before sunset. |
Dinner tonight was Italian. Pizza for kids, and lots of other good dishes that we shared.
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