Day 28

There’s nothing static about Christchurch (link)! I woke up around half past two at night feeling the walls and ground shaking. Before I got out of my bed the shaking stopped. I think I yelled something and then Fabienne, Sam and Eric stood next to me laughing. I asked: “Wow. What’s going on? Was this really an earthquake?” and they answered: “Yep, and you just slept though two other ones at 2am! But we made sure that you and the house were okay”. I was shocked: “What, really!?” We went outside the house for a beer and talked about the earthquakes. I felt so lucky to be surrounded by locals that could tell me that this was quite normal for Christchurch because it is aftershocks from the 7.1 earthquake on September 4. The magnitudes from the three earthquakes was 4.2, 3.8 and 3.7. Throughout the night the aftershocks appeared every half an hour! When I woke up it seemed as if the whole thing was over and I sat down to relax with John at the bench in the garden. Suddenly a much deeper and stronger shaking began and I jumped over to John, grabbed his arm yelling and swearing in Danish while I could see the house shaking from one side to the other! This one was 4.9 and that really scared me...

After the big earthquake (September 4th) the chimney fell down and theese aftershocks only added to the damages of the house. Having my adrenaline pumping through my body every time another aftershock happened I didn’t feel like leaving the house at all. John suggested that we left the center of the city to go tramping in the area of Lyttleton. On our way we saw lots of damage from the earthquake: houses being evacuated, streets closed off, windows broken, bricks etc. fallen down, people and lots of police and firemen on the streets. On the other hand some people were unaffected and went shopping for Boxing Day sales (in the shops that weren’t at risk)

The hostel where I would have stayed was evacuated!

Nice to get away from the earthquakes! Lyttleton is a very interesting region because it’s where the first settlers arrived in Christchurch in the 1840s. We walked the Bridle Path, a historical walk with a view over both Lyttleton and Christchurch.