New Zealand: Picton to Christchurch

We were up at 5AM to catch the dawn bus for the long ride to Christchurch. (See previous New Zealand posts.) The above photo is actually from later, after we were well on our way. Yawn.

The Piwaka Lodge was packed with hikers (“trampers”), but we were up early enough to avoid the rush for the included hot or cold breakfast. Suitably nourished and caffeinated, we walked the 10 minutes to the Intercity bus stop, as dawn was breaking.

The bus was large and spacious — designed for long distances — and offered limited free wi-fi, plus whatever cellphone and data signals you could catch on your own as you rolled through the countryside.

(Phone/Tech aside: We’re on T-Mobile at home, which has reciprocal arrangements with other service providers around the world: Our regular SIM cards and phones worked fine with Vodaphone and several other companies in New Zealand; no special signup, no configuration change, no new SIM needed. Although the coverage was spotty out in the countryside, where ever there was a signal, we could usually get and use it. The no-extra-charge T-Mobile deal has data and speed caps, so we’d use wi-fi when it was available. But it was nice not to have to buy a SIM or a disposable phone.)

(Relatedly, I used a VPN to keep my online activities private while using unknown access providers. I use Express VPN as my main VPN — it has lots of fast servers around the world — and the ultra-simple Canadian Tunnelbear VPN as my backup.)

As we crossed from Picton to the eastern coastal roads, the dawn was a spectacle of color and light, even through the bus windows.

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More pix: https://photos.app.goo.gl/49deH6oRr5BjjMac7

Roughly halfway, we passed through the Kaikoura area, where we saw hundreds of seals warming on the rocks, and many, many pods of dolphins cavorting offshore. There’s a very active “swim with the wild dolphins and seals,” and “watch the sperm whales” industry in the small coves and villages we passed through.

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More seals and area scenery: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rKtM6vRo4DWSYNh67

A massive 7.8 earthquake shook the area in 2016; over the course of two short minutes, the local beaches were substantially lifted (up to 2m/6+ft), exposing long stretches of formerly-submerged rocks; and triggering many, many landslides (“slips”) that ruined the shoreline roads and train tracks. The final stages of repairs and improvements (to make the roads and train tracks more quake- and slip-resistant) were still taking place.

The sudden change in shoreline also disrupted the tide zone ecology; restrictions are in effect to let nature recover without human interference.

After Kaikoura, the highway then moved inland, though vineyards, sheep farms, and dry, dry hills. To me, it looked a lot like interior California in summer: sere, pastoral, and beautiful.

Some pix: https://photos.app.goo.gl/b77FQs5U4SSdJxZx8

The ride was very long, but very scenic.

We arrived in Christchurch in midafternoon with tired butts but also with that sense of human-scale landscape and detail that you can never, ever get from flying.

We planned to stay in Christchurch for 2 nights. We’d explore the city itself for a day; then spend a day taking the Tranzalpine (local spelling is with a “z”) train across the Southern Alps to New Zealand’s west coast at Greymouth, and back.

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