Christchurch

Christchurch was a very green city with a river running through it, a massive park to the left and possibly the best art gallery in NZ. I would have loved to stay longer to see more of it, but my time was up in this little country.

However the flight was amazing and had the most number of spectacular views I've ever witnessed! I had no idea I was about to step onto an 11 hour flight (I knew I was flying haha, but predicted 7 hours). Before we flew into the white cloud that rained onto the city, there were rectangular patches of all colours. The rest was white and then ocean until the approach onto the coastline of Australia. It must have been just south of Sydney somewhere. We ended up flying diagonally across the entire continent, over Alice Springs and then to Derby in the West which I never saw on land. The ground transformed several times into weird and interesting arrangements. The familiar red-oranges covered everything with the occasional gray water hole and streams of greens. Possibly a salt field in ameoba shaped blobs. And the brilliant white clouds dotting the surface, several hundreds of metres above it all. Casting dark blue-gray shadows back down onto the land. And above the clouds were us, in the air where it is always perfectly blue because nothing is above us, abstructing the view. These layers of patterns and objects just need to be painted.

That's not all! On the edge of northern Australia, a cloud streamed rain onto the coastline and a thick, colourful rainbow arched the phenomenon. Passing over one of the Indonesian islands, a huge, black volcano with a deep sandy interior, poked high above the clouds surrounding it. I didn't realize ocean could be so calm as to reflect a cloud's image like a mirror. Passing more islands, large and small, blobs and triangles. Separated sometimes by a river, sometimes by miles. Parts of the edges submerged under water, but still visible through the clearness. I could peice them all together like a puzzle, thinking about how many years of earthquakes and eruptions it took to separate them this way. WOW. P