Life in Vacant Spaces: Christchurch Part 2

I know this is going to be a stressful day, and we start off by checking out of our airport hotel - booked into yesterday for obvious reasons when flights into and out of Auckland were cancelled yesterday. Considerately, they have scales to weigh our luggage - and predictably one is way over the maximum 23kg (we’re not extravagant packers, but we’ve been away for nearly nine weeks and that has included a cruise), so we frantically repack until both our cases toe the line. 

So it’s off to the airport, worried that this rescheduled flight might not allow sufficient time for us to make our international connection. If only that was our only issue…..

We check in our bags and settle down in the quietest bar area we can find. Earlier, I looked at the wind speeds forecast for Auckland Airport this afternoon. Bearing in mind the BBC app is indicating winds at 55 mph and above, flying seems unlikely, but who am I to judge? So it’d hardly surprising to hear our flight - initially just ours and one other - has been cancelled. That’s it - any hope of getting home has gone. I join a queue to reschedule our flights, at the same time joining an on-line chat with Qatar airlines to try to reschedule our flights with them - and we’re long past the 24 hour deadline to be ‘allowed’ to do this. 

I’m OK - keeping relatively calm - but meanwhile more and more flights have been cancelled and Air New Zealand are struggling to cope. The straw that breaks this camel’s back is when they change the queuing system so I have to leave the one I’ve stood in for the best part of an hour and join the back of another. At this point, I hand over to G and focus instead on the international flights. 

A few hours later, we finally have a new flight for 9.00pm tomorrow (Wednesday) - too late to connect with our Qatar flight even if I can secure a seat - so we’ll need at least a one night stay in Auckland. 

But first I need to find a hotel for tonight; last night’s hotel is full, but I find another a little further out - and thankfully it’s lovely. There’s lots of exchanging tales of woe with fellow travellers, but we all agree - at least we’re safe and dry and warm. We’re not in danger. Our problems are as nothing when we look at the images on the silent TV screen across the bar. It’s hard to believe these scenes of catastrophic magnitude are  just a few hours away, and often places we have visited on this trip. 

So we settle down in comfort, eat a delicious meal, and drink - I must admit I’ve consumed far too much wine today; when the waitress comes along and asks ‘Do you need another glass? - need, not want - you know you’re looking stressed. 

All this time, my chat with Qatar has been going on, frequently interrupted by a change of agent as the line goes dead and I have to start again. And all the time the cost of changing flights is rising - and rising significantly. I must admit, I’m fast running out of patience, alternating between anger and tears - and after nine hours  I voicing some very clear complaints about appalling customer service, I give up to face it in the morning. 

Then, just after midnight, my phone rings, and the lovely Rahul from Doha is calling me. Within minutes, he’s sorted out our flights - admittedly it’s now Friday and not Thursday, but at least that avoids a 21hr layover in the airport- and  miraculously there is NO CHARGE! At last - now I can sleep…… though of course I don’t. 

Not surprisingly, I haven’t taken any photos today, but of course I’ve plenty to spare from previous days, so I’m stretching the rules a tad. So today it’s Christchurch creativity. I photographed the ‘Incubator’ container ‘life in vacant spaces’ just liking the quirkiness of it - and the idea of art brightening up the empty spaces of the city. But it’s only after Googling this that its full potential is apparent - and I wish I’d looked into these projects more. 

https://www.livs.org.nz/about

As it is, you have a selection of street art from the city - the antithesis of yesterday’s post, I suppose.  I’ve not used the ‘Incubator’ image as a main, as I think others are more interestingly, but I’ve included it for its context. 

I’ve also included the ‘worrybug’ image - linked to a project initially set up to help children’s anxiety after the Christchurch earthquake, but clearly having a far wider significance.  

http://www.theworrybug.co.nz

And of course, it would be wrong to end this post without some final thoughts to those  who have been caught in the path of Gabrielle.  Such a gentle name, but such destructive power.