Christchurch

On Saturday we docked at Christchurch, New Zealand. Our excursion was called "Journey to Middle Earth", which meant that we were going to travel to the parts of New Zealand where the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed. The natural response to that is "I'm going on an adventure!" That is a line from The Hobbit, a prequel to the Lord of the Rings movies. 

Christchurch is a nice little town surrounded by hills. 

Iconic Christchurch Church

Our bus driver/tour guide's name was Steve and he was a great guide, full of interesting information.

Steve

Some of the things we learned from Steve about Christchurch: This city is described as having "old world charm and modern innovation". It is one of five cities that are considered an Antarctic Gateway City. Christchurch is in the province (state) of Canterbury and has a population of 415,000. A big event that had a huge impact on Christchurch was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that occurred in September of 2010. Apparently this was a defining event as Steve often referred to "before the earthquake" as a reference point in his talk. It would be akin to people in New Orleans referring to "before Katrina" or the universal "before Covid". The earthquake apparently was accompanied by considerable shaking, as Steve, who is a pretty big man, told us that he woke up on the floor. He had been thrown out of bed by the earthquake. There was a lot of damaged buildings which are still being replaced today. It seemed odd to us that more progress hasn't been made in the building replacement since it's been over 14 years. Joe asked Steve about it and he said there is a lot of government bureaucracy, with permits, licensing, etc. There apparently was an aftershock that occurred five months later, in Feb. 2011, that did more damage. Even though it was an aftershock, it was pretty much the equivalent of another major quake, as it's magnitude was 6.3. Steve said there was a lot of looting that took place after the earthquake. Unfortunately, some things are universal.

New Zealand consists of two islands, known as the North Island and the South Island. So far our cruise has only been on the South Island, as we started on the southwest coast, rounded the tip of the South Island, and now are heading north along the coast off the South Island. Steve, however, had a different view of the New Zealand geography. He said that there is the mainland and then the North Island. He obviously considers the South Island, where he grew up, to be the main part of the country. He said the South Island is the real New Zealand and the people are much friendlier here.

When Christchurch was settled in the 1850s, there were 3 requirements for someone to come here. They had to be less than 40 years old, had to know a trade, and had to have a membership in a local church. There are a lot of murals on sides of buildings in Christchurch, and it has been said to be an outdoor citywide art museum. 

Our excursion started off with a tour of the city of Christchurch. After this we drove away from the coast toward the inland hills and mountains. They call these mountains the Southern Alps. When we left Christchurch, the weather was overcast and cool. Steve kept telling us that the weather would clear and get warmer once we got up into the mountains. That seemed a little backwards. Shouldn't it get cooler and maybe more overcast in the mountains? But Steve was right - once we got into the mountains the sun came out and we had a beautiful day. 

We stopped for pastries and tea on the way. 

War Memorial where we had tea and pastries

After tea and pastries, we continued our drive to the mountains. Along the way there were eight lakes and various mountain peaks. One of the mountains is called Mt. Sunday. According to Steve, the early Anglican settlers had services on the mountain every Sunday, so they just began referring to the mountain as Mt. Sunday.

We drove through the towns of Rolleston, Dunsandel, Rakaia, and Ashburton, and finally came to Mt. Doom, I mean Mt. Somers, where we viewed the locations where filming took place for Lord of the Rings. The first location was where the scene from "Helm's Deep" was filmed. We learned that the filming of the Battle of Helms Deep took four months of night filming in the freezing cold and rain. The area where it was filmed consisted of beautiful mountain scenery. 

After this we continued to the place where the Rohan Rider's took place and a castle (Edoras) was built on top of a vertical rock face. Again, more stunning scenery.

When the movie producers were making the film, they advertised for horse riders, locals, that they wanted to use for the Rohan Riders. Apparently they only received 75 responses. They needed many more than this. Then they learned that most of the horse riders in New Zealand are women. So they pulled the ad, re-advertised for women horse riders, and received many responses. So if you watch the movies, most of the Rohan Riders are women, although they made them up to look like men.

They had some swords (props) that we were allowed to take pictures with.

On the return bus ride, Steve played a couple of DVDs about the making of the movies which showed the filming locations that we had just visited, as we continued to enjoy the beautiful countryside.

We stopped at the same place where we had tea in the morning, for some sandwiches (and Cadbury chocolates!) for lunch. The sandwiches were unusual - egg salad on one side with meat (ham, roast beef, or salami) on the other side. It sounds like a weird combination but they were delicious. Or maybe we were just really hungry by this time.

On the way home, Steve drove along a road that took us to an overlook of the city of Christchurch, where we had some nice views of the city and ocean.

We set sail from Christchurch in the evening and saw some more nice scenery and a beautiful sunset.