Ōtautahi / Christchurch Daily Photo

I drove out to Kaituna Valley this afternoon for a business meeting and had to pull over and stop to take this photo – the clouds and hills were just so stunning. Kaituna Valley is on the Banks Peninsula and about a 40 minute drive from Christchurch (it’s a turn off from the road to Akaroa near Lake Ellesmere). I was a nice place to be for the afternoon – very peaceful and a welcome break from the cacophony of various sounds that is Christchurch at the moment and a great spot to calm the nerves after a 5.3 after shock at 3am this morning (thankfully for us on the other side of the town this time – but still unpleasant). The after shocks feel quite different for us if they are on the West versus the East side of the city. If they are hill quakes (which most of them have been since February), we get a short sharp jolt and everything rattles, but if it’s on the West the after shock is longer and rolling. I woke up about 4 minutes before this morning’s aftershock happened (like I did for the original quake back in September) – which makes me wonder if there was some noise with it as well (I wasn’t aware of any).

Here’s hoping for a shake free evening (well at least free of the ones we can feel), as I really could do with an uninterrupted night’s sleep.