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.

I’m in Greymouth just now, catching up on website updates. Most of the internet places I’ve found recently have been both very expensive and very limited in terms of what you can do (so I can’t sort out pictures before uploading them).

Anyway, I spent a couple of nights in Auckland. Went to the Maritime Museum and the War Memorial Museum but didn’t really warm to the city. It seems like they’re so busy trying to be a modern city that they’ve demolished most things that would give it any kind of character. But I was recovering from a long and horrible flight, so maybe I was just in the wrong mood.

(The thin lines you can just see coming down from the Sky Tower is part of an “adventure” activity where you can jump off the tower and drop to the ground attached to a wire.)

The flight from Canada was extra horrible because I went out for dinner with Adrian and Amy on Friday night, then for a few beers. By the time we got back to the house and I got to bed it was about 2:30am, I had to get up around 4:30am for a taxi to the airport! I was so hungover on the Vancouver-LAX leg that I was seriously considering using the sick bag.

LAX has to be a top contender in the world’s dullest airports, the Tom Bradley International Terminal has only several copies of the same three (dull) shops, a few food outlets and a general feeling of shabbyness. After far too many hours there I boarded the Qantas flight to Auckland, over 12 hours of being squashed into a full 747.

This is costing me a fortune, so I’ll finish for now and try to catch up later when I can find cheaper internet access somewhere else.

I’m at Auckland airport, waiting for my flight to Christchurch. Haven’t had a chance to put anything up here the past couple of days.

More to follow, including my only photo from Auckland and a rant about the desolate and dull LAX.