Ash clouds, earthquakes and reunions

After 33 hours of travelling, I finally arrived in Christchurch. The first flight, from Brussels to Abu Dhabi (Doooooo) was amazing! There were only about 20 people in one compartment – in other words: just about an empty flight – which meant I could stretch out over 4 seats and have a bit of a sleep. Unfortunately this flight was over in 6 hours. The long haul, 14 hours, was spent in a small seat next to a (nice) Swedish guy but unfortunately with about 5 crying babies around us. Ah well, it can’t all be golden; the food was good and the service impeccable :).

When I arrived in Sydney for my last connection to Christchurch, everything was still ok, but then I got a text from Alex who said he hoped my flight wouldn’t be cancelled due to the ash cloud. I hadn’t heard anything up until then but slowly it dawned on me that a lot of flights were cancelled and the airport atmosphere was a bit hectic. Luckily, my flight was still going, but because of the Chilean ash cloud the plane got in late, which made us board about an hour late. After that we were on the plane for about half an hour when we got the news that “something was wrong with the air conditioning” and we had to taxi back to the gate. At the gate (still on the plane) we heard that the engineers couldn’t really fix the problem, and we could fly via a different route, so now they ‘just’ had to check the route with the route planning people. “It should only take us about 10 minutes more”. About half an hour later (throat getting dry, bum extremely sore, mood getting foul), we could finally take off – via a different flight path, in the direction of Auckland, which also took us an hour longer than normal. Curse you, ash cloud!
Finally, 3 hours late, I arrived in Christchurch … and heard through the grapevine that there had been 2 more (severe) earthquakes just hours before. It was amazing my plane even arrived.


Reunion with Alex was amazing, after haven’t seen each other for about 3 months. The drive towards the city quite gave me a feeling of homecoming. I’ve been in Christchurch a few times now and am starting to know it. Unfortunately, the quakes have really rocked the city once more. The February quake has wrecked about half of it, and the ones upon arrival only added to the damage; such a shame. Yesterday I saw the city in daylight and damage is pretty bad, so different from when I arrived first in September.
Since arrival, there have been a few aftershocks as well, which is pretty scary. Every once in a while, wherever you are (sitting in the sofa, standing in the kitchen, lying in bed), suddenly the house starts rattling and you just look up from whatever you’re doing, wait, count and breathe out when it stops after a few seconds, hoping it won’t start again immediately, for that might mean it’s a ‘bad one’.


It’s not too bad of course – I’m happy to be back. We already had a nice dinner with ‘cousin Ned’ and ‘Mr. Smiley’, who are truly nice people. I’m looking forward to finding a place in Queenstown to spend the winter there, find a job and get some snowboarding in. But before that, we’ll stay in Christchurch for a few more days (fingers crossed...), combined with a visit to Mount Algidus Station (can’t wait to see Larry the dog again!) and the Lyttelton Festival of Lights this week. Good times ahead, oh yeah :-).