The big shake

So first thing's first: the earthquake. September 4 last year, at 4:30am, there was a 7.1 quake. No one was killed. The epicentre was further from downtown Christchurch and deeper, and everyone was in bed (instead of standing in or under big buildings). Very lucky.

February 22, this year, at 12:51, there was a 6.3 quake. This time people were in all the wrong places and the epicentre was closer and shallower. The death toll so far is about 155, with about another 80 expected. By the end, this will rank as probably the 2nd worst earthquake in a Western country in the last decade. Asian and South American countries, plus Haiti of course, have been devastated time and time again by earthquakes. We actually spent a few days where the epicentre was, about a month before the quake. So it's really driven the destructive power of earthquakes home for us. We were close enough that we probably could've felt the ground move, but as we were in a moving vehicle and tired, we didn't notice anything. Gas, food, drinkable water, etc have all been scarce at times the closer you get to Christchurch and there is a pretty sizeable exodus in place. Christchurch is tied for the second largest city in the country and by far the biggest on the south island. I think there's a lot of unspoken questions about the future of the city. The damage is estimated around $20 billion. We met quite a few first-hand witnesses as they were fleeing the city over the week that followed, so we've gathered a pretty decent idea of how things went. Talked to a guy who helped bandage people up afterwards, a guy who saw two buses get crushed by falling debris, and a lady whose father-in-law was still missing. All that is hard enough to imagine, but of course it's the drawn-out period of body recovery, rubble removal, and general state of confusion that I don't think anyone, including us, can grasp without being present. The big difference here though, unlike Haiti for example (the deadliest quake in the last 30 years) is that disease won't ravage the country for years to come.

 We however, are realistically quite uneffected and unaffected by the quake, at least compared to most people. Some grocery store shelves were totally empty of water, oats, bread, and pasta, plus accomodation was a bit hard to find, but that was about the extent of inconveniences we had to put up with. Our route has taken us north of Christchurch for the last time, so we'll only be moving further and further from the areas most effected.

After our last tramp and another rendez-vous with my buddy Kyle, and about a week before the quake, we made our way back up the West Coast, this time in weather much more conducive to being able to appreciate the views. Mostly retraced our steps, but managed to make it up a one way road to a relatively remote part of the island. We stayed at a hostel and the lady let us borrow her car when she saw how long it was taking us to get rides. We got gas at the end-of-the-road town and not only was it the most I've ever paid for gas, it was TWICE as much as I've ever paid for gas. In Canadian dollars, about $3.02. Hopefully that's not a chilling vision of things to come in the future, with peak oil and all that, but it's probably inevitable everywhere at some point. But at least we got to give back a bit and were able to pick up 3 tired stranded hitchhikers, so that felt good. I think the best, though not safest, combination of hitchhikers is 2 girls.

After the quake, we decided to stock up on food and hit the trails, more to get away from the hitchhiking than to get closer to nature, but it helped that the area was nicer than expected...



Getting to the trailhead was probably some of the easier hitching we've had, since everyone was heading out of Christchurch and even though they were generally pretty full up with stuff, they had a lot of sympathy. But once we dropped our excess baggage off at a hotel, and had to backtrack in the other direction, sympathy for hitchhikers was back to normal and it took 2hrs to hitch 15km.

We're now back at a farm we'd stayed at before just working, resting, catching up on internet stuff (like this), and reading. Hoping the South Island will give us just one good stretch of weather for a final multi-day trip...

-Dan