If you were to send your five year old out into the front yard armed with three jumbo bags of cotton balls and the instruction to distribute them evenly across the entire green space, the result would approximate the manner in which sheep dot the landscape of the hillsides of New Zealand. The sheep are everywhere, and there are more than a few tucked into unexpected places.

Akaroa is an interesting little town.

It’s the only town in New Zealand that was settled by the French, not the English or Irish. The streets are all “rue…” such and such. It’s tucked into one of the long inlets on the Banks Peninsula, the large round protrusion to the east of Christchurch, on the South Island. It feels a world away from the bustle of New Zealand’s second largest city, and it’s entirely free of the devastation that still mars the face of Christchurch, a full three years after the earthquake that flattened multi-story buildings, dropped homes from cliff faces, and turned a quaint English styled city into a post-apocalyptic war zone landscape.

Shipping containers, stacked double height, line long sections of cliff in hopes of preventing tumbling boulders, or debris from the houses split in half and still left hanging at the precipice, from dropping into the road. Buildings in the bustling downtown are cracked down the middle, piles of brick and twisted metal with gaping mouths of office spaces echoing the now silent screams of the people in those rooms when the earth shook them like fleas from a dog’s back. It’s now a city of stark contrasts, of devastation and progressive development. The citizens have rallied, and done their best… are doing their best, to pick up, clean up, and move on, even as entire neighbourhoods are bulldozed into the ground and the houses that can be saved are awaiting repairs, plywood over broken windows, brick walls supported with wooden scaffolds, and not enough builders to go around. Did I mention it’s been three years?

Our friends, who live in a beautiful home in Redcliffs told stories of standing in their front room watching their city burn, even as their own house shuddered around them and the contents of every cupboard leapt from the walls and smashed on the floor. They consider themselves lucky, because their house was not destroyed and their people were safe. There is hope that their repairs will be done in the next few months. It’s been a long wait. We spent two lovely days with them, exploring their city, visiting the farmer’s market, meeting mothers and sisters, telling stories and laughing over dinner. All such normal things, and yet there are people who are still without basic services, like water and sewer in the wake of a quake that happened years ago.

Can you imagine?

And yet, the tone of the city is one of resilience. The Restart Container Mall in the center of downtown has become a post-apocalyptic commerce center and an example of community spirit, with coffee houses, local shops and weekend markets with street performers and stalls selling handmade crafts, alongside grocery and box stores, all built up using shipping containers as infrastructure. It’s resourceful, and it’s working.

Tonight we’re camped at Purple Peak in a dark, steady rain.

We wound up and up from the narrow inlet at Akaroa to what felt like the top of the world, dotted in every direction with cotton ball sheep. Tony drove the Thunder Pig along the knife’s edge on a dirt road that reminded us that we really have to want to be here to find it. Sheep fled before us on the dirt road as it twisted down the backside of the hill and some of the biggest hares we’ve seen leapt, startled, from the track.

Dinner was butter chicken, but we didn’t eat much. We’d filled up on cheese and crackers with little slivers of fudge, nursed along as Tony read by candle light as darkness found us and tucked the edges of our high cloud blanket in around our camper and the sheep in the field we’re camped in looked on with curiosity. Hannah is washing up now. The boys are woven into their blankets. Jupiter has exploded and become a second sun and we’ve been given all of the worlds, except Europa, to explore. The rain is tapping a morse code that never quite forms words but communicates peace and quiet to all who care to listen.