Needed a quick coffee in the morning and headed to the beach in New Brighton – where I have my B&B. It’s a little suburb of Chch, as the locals tend to call their hometown.

The little street towards the beach was also struck by the earthquake. Lots of empty spaces, parking spaces, art, park benches in the nowhere, among the usual beach shops, tourist stuff, surf boards and little coffee places…

Then, on to the new pier. Brighton already had one till it was demolished in the 1950, until a loal group collected money and lobbied for a new pier, that was finally built, quake proof, in the 1990s. Modern, re-enforced concrete, it goes out into the sea for 300 meters. Once upon a time, its old version was used to dock the big ocean liners. But today it is rather recreative.

People use it for a walk, and you can observe a number of men fishing, mostly small and big crabs. From what I saw, the spot is a good one, it was crawling and moving in those buckets.

The 18 kilometers of beach have great waves, with whole flocks of surfers enjoying a good ride on the waves. A perfect way to start into a sunny day with a Latte-to-go.

If I hadn’t planned to drive out to Akaroa today, this would have been a perfect spot to linger half a day.