Caboose

I’m now in Queenstown and am having a day of doing laundry, trying not to spend money and taking advantage of cheap internet access.

While I was in Auckland I spent a while trying to work out what to do in New Zealand. I thought about hiring a car but for one person it’s just too expensive. Instead I booked myself onto the Magic bus, one of several hop-on-hop-off bus operators. As I was keen to take the TranzAlpine train I chose a route starting in Christchurch. A quick look on the internet revealed that the cheapest way to get there was to fly, I got a ticket with Qantas for NZD 79.

So on Tuesday evening I took the bus out to Auckland airport and flew to Christchurch. I’d booked ahead at Dorset House backpackers, which is probably the nicest hostel I’ve stayed in. It has a well-equipped kitchen, nice rooms, no bunk beds and just gives the impression that the owners care about the place.

Christchurch is a pleasant city, far fewer tall buildings than Auckland and I preferred the atmosphere. There’s even a free shuttle bus around the centre. I couldn’t resist going out to the International Antarctic Centre, which was (perhaps predictably) a disappointment. It really only contains two things, a cold room (-5°C) where they occasionally turn on some fans to simulate an antarctic storm and some penguins. The storm is nothing like the real thing, no reduction in visibility and not enough wind. The whole centre is also very biased towards New Zealand and American antarctic activities, in fact many of the maps show only the Ross Sea side of the continent. I can think of a lot of better ways to spend NZD 30.

On Thursday I went for a walk in the Port Hills to the south of Christchurch, walking up from the end of the bus line to the Sign of the Kiwi resthouse — where I stopped for coffee and scones — then along the hills past the top station of the gondola and down into Lyttelton. The wind up on the hills was fierce, on occasions knocking me sideways. Lyttelton has a small museum with a fairly random selection of exhibits and the town’s history as the departure point for many of the antarctic expeditions of the heroic age is represented by a separate section. In the evening I joined Bao and Toivo (not sure if I spelled that right) from the hostel for beer and pizza in a huge (and empty) sports bar called the Holy Grail.