Day 59 'Tsunami Alerts'

Today was an interesting day, we packed up our bags, left our motel room to go to reception to pay our account and heard the lady at the front desk saying on the phone "We can't take any bookings at the moment as we are on Tsunami Alert, the roads are closed, beach access is prohibited and the ferries are not sailing!"
Once she got off the phone she told us that there had been a very severe 8.8 earthquake in Chile and that the beach in front of us was due to have Tsunami in 20 minutes and that she had been trying to ring us to tell us to leave!
We promptly paid the bill, grabbed our bags and headed for higher ground.
It ended up being a non-event but you still had to follow the procedures and the police and locals were very good in keeping us informed. Of course my iPhone filled me in on all the latest updates around New Zealand.
Because my camera SD card got corrupted the day before, I had to use my iPhone to take photos, so this is the photo when the tsunami supposedly reached us.

And this next photo was when we went back to the beach. There were a couple of ships and dozens of yachts just sitting out on the horizon, not moving. They are hard to see in this iPhone photo.