Jacob and I both sat in the van for a second before moving. Jacob nervously trying get his bearings behind the wheel, me nervously hoping that he WOULD get his bearings! lol And then off we went... for about 10 minutes until we found a grocery store and a coffee shop with wifi. We needed food and to let our families know we were ok.
And then we were off, for real this time, to our first destination, Akaroa!
Akaroa is on the east coast of the south island in a big crater, which means we climbed up windy roads in order to get there. I think this was kind of a good initiation for Jacob in terms of New Zealand driving. =) The views were gorgeous though, and I kept thinking that the rolling hills were what I expected Ireland to look like ( haven't yet been, but it's on my list).
Our first "holiday park" was reserved months ago. We planned to stay 2 nights (to recoup from the jet lag) and, as I'm a bit of an obsessive planner, I wanted to make sure that we had a place already picked out for our first night. I knew we were going to be tired and cranky and probably wouldn't want to be wandering around looking for a place to park for the night.
It turned out to be a fantastic place to spend our first day and a half on the island. We had gorgeous views onto the bay (I loved waking up to it!) and were within walking distance from the french-inspired village.
The only downfall was mother nature.
When we woke up that first morning we decided to walk down to the village. The clouds looked a little ominous, so we wore layers and brought our umbrella. Sure glad we did! After walking through the township and getting to the other end, it started to rain. First a little bit, and then a LOT. By the time we'd gotten back to our camper we were soaked and I was covered in mud (after slipping down a muddy embankment). It was only about 2 in the afternoon at this point. We spent the rest of the day in the camper reading, napping and listening to the rain (and HAIL) come pummeling down.
After dinner, some time watching Kiwi TV in the park's lounge, and running through the rain, Jacob and I headed to bed for what we hoped would be a good night's sleep.
Fast forward to about 4:30 am...
"WHAT THE F*** IS THAT!!!"
This was, I admit, a direct quote when I was startled awake by our campervan violently shaking back and forth. I was SURE that some guys were outside screwing with the tourists by surrounding and shaking the van. Jacob, ever the thinker (even in the middle of the night) said, "I think it's an earthquake". I still made him look outside to make sure there weren't big rugby-sized guys out there. We laid there for the next couple of hours feeling the aftershocks, me wishing they would stop, Jacob probably thinking they were pretty cool.
The next morning we were packing up getting ready to head out to go swim with the dolphins in the bay (something I had booked before we left and was REALLY excited about), when the camp host came down to check in with us and let us know that the earthquake had been (at that time) classified as a 7.4 (it was later dropped to a 7.1) and that there had been a lot of damage in Christchurch and surrounding villages.
We hadn't realized that the quake had been that bad. Neither Jacob nor myself had been in an earthquake before, and we WERE in a bed with shock absorbers. However, the moment I heard it was a 7.4 I thought "oh crap... my mom will hear about this one, I better send her a message so she doesn't freak out." We sent our families texts to let them know we were alive and ok* and headed out to check in at the wharf. We kinda figured that the excursion would be cancelled at this point, but thought we should check in before we left town.
There was a fair bit of damage in the village, but nothing in comparison to what Christchurch experienced. The wharf was messed up, a couple of the historic building had some structural damage, and there was no power so everything was closed (thank goodness we had food in the camper), but otherwise Akaroa was still kicking. People were out everywhere on the streets accessing the damage and talking about their experiences the night before.
This photo was taken the day before-- after the earthquake a couple of the monument's turrets had crumbled down.
The damaged wharfAs predicted, our dolphin excursion was canceled, so Jacob and I got an early start out of town, listening to news on the radio about the damage in Christchurch, and talking about how this honeymoon was going to be one to remember!
*The text message we sent our parents never actually made it... which meant that we had MANY concerned e-mails and voicemails by the time we got internet access later that day.
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