Advertisement
Published: April 23rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
Wheatfield
View from Tranzapline train The Tranzalpine train journey is: 'rated one of the world’s great scenic railway journeys'. Here's some blurb from promotional material. Of course I was travelling from Greymouth heading towards Christchurch, not from Christchurch to Greymouth, so you may have to read some of this backwards ;o)
The TranzAlpine scenic train journey travels between Christchurch and Greymouth, from one coast of New Zealand to the other. From your carriage you’ll see the fields of the Canterbury Plains and farmland, followed by the spectacular gorges and river valleys of the Waimakariri River. Your train then climbs into the Southern Alps before descending through lush beech rain forest to the West Coast town of Greymouth - a great base for visits to Punakaiki and the always popular glaciers.
The TranzAlpine journey is an ideal weekend getaway or honeymoon vacation highlight. All carriages include both one way seating and tabled group seating allowing you to experience the amazing views while enjoying the company of other passengers on-board. An open air viewing carriage allows you to get even closer to the stunning scenery and provides many opportunities to photograph your favourite spots. There’s a lot to look forward to!
Our train journey sets
Enroute
View from Tranzapline train off from Christchurch - New Zealand's largest city on the South Island. The trip is 223.8 kilometres long and takes just four and a half hours. There are 16 tunnels, and 5 viaducts, the highest being the Staircase standing at 73 metres.
Monday 21st April - I woke up surprisingly early about 6.30am and got packed in a record 10 minutes, well ahead of time. The Tranzapline train was not due to leave Greymouth until 1.45pm that afternoon (to arrive in Christchurch around 6pm). Good job I did get ready early though as the owner was leaving the hostel early to run errands and so was able to give me a lift into town. So at around 9am, I arrived in town and checked my big rucksack into the train station. I went into the Kodak shop to do some blogging, only to find that a Trojan Virus was present on my memory card, so....I pressed 'heal' and the photos on the memory card disappeared even though they were on my camera!! eeeekkk! Trying not to go hysterical, no laughing now VOPS team ;o) , I hadn't got around to backing the photos up on dvd. So I went
Arthur's Pass National Park
View taken from the Transalpine train 'viewing car' and had a word with the desk who said that 'Dave' would be the best person and available in about half an hour. Dave then spent the next hour and a half finding my hidden photos, saving them to a dvd and deleting the corrupted files - phew!! Apparently I had 1400 files on the memory card!!! Some of the photos are out of place so might take a while later on to find the ones that I want, but still, I was very very relieved. At 1.30pm I boarded the train and found I had a window seat. So...the train started off and about 10 of us risked pneumonia by hopping into the viewing car in the freezing cold. I couldn't stay out there for long so kept walking back down the corridor each time the announcer said that was something else of interest coming up, interesting journey. At around 5.30pm I booked accommodation at a backpackers in Christchurch called The Jailhouse. My mobile phone credit was running low but luckily I had a couple of minutes left. We arrived at Christchurch at around 6.10pm and I grabbed my large rucksack and made my way to the taxi rank.
Orange Sunset
View from Tranzapline train I then experienced the first real unhelpfulness in NZ when two taxi drivers made excuses not to take me 10 minutes down the road to the backpackers (they were waiting for bigger fares apparently). Luckily I had a word with a shuttle driver who agreed to take me for $10. There was an american girl on the shuttle from San Francisco, called Kimberley, who hadn't booked any accommodation, so she ended up booking into the Jailhouse too and we shared a dorm. Kimberley and I went out to a chinese restaurant just round the corner for dinner. The backpackers is very clean, crispiest sheet experience so far, but lacks a cosy lounge, to be expected in an old prison I guess.
Tuesday 22nd April - After booking the balloon ride for the following morning ($290, - it's more expensive than that in the UK - that's why I haven't done it for 10 years), I spent quite a large chunk of the day trying to get my photos from the dvd and onto my blog 'Go West'. It took several hours as, due to the Trojan Virus issue, the photos were all over the place. Once I'd saved the
blog, it didn't work properly anyway, so I sent an email to the travelblog technical team. I took a few coffee breaks and had a chat to the staff who all wanted to know why I was spending so much time on the pc! I popped out for lunch and went into what I thought was a fish and chip shop and ended up buying $10 of fresh monkfish, too embarassed to say anything, it was obviously just not one of my days! I ended up saving the uncooked monkfish for another time and having a burger. At around 4pm I decided I'd better head out and get some Vitamin A and walked about 20 minutes into the City Centre and saw the Arts Centre and some of the sights. I had been told by the backpackers that it wasn't possible to see a Rugby game as they are mostly at weekends around here, so I ended up watching LOTR, The Twin Towers in the Jailhouse Cinema and having a prawn chow mein.
Wednesday 23rd April - I set the alarm for 4.30am as that was the time I was supposed to phone the Balloon flight hot-line to find
The weather starts to clear
And the 'viewing car' warms from near freezing point! out if the hot air ballooning was on today. However, I woke up at 3.45am and 10 minutes later a well-timed text came through from mum saying my parcel of presents had safely arrived. 4.30am I called the hotline and the flight was on! 5.10am I picked up the 'Up up and Away' bus outside and met a lady called Rae on the bus who's 70 year old (her husband didn't want to come, apparently he's only interested in farming, even though they are on holiday). We drove around picking up the rest of the passengers and then drove to two potential flying sites where the wind was too strong. We arrived at the third site, Oxford, where conditions were good. Apparently, there is a very good restaurant owned by a Kiwi chef here called Jo Seagers, will try to check out her monkfish recipe! We had to pitch in and help set-up as it's the biggest balloon in the country and cannot be managed by the two pilots alone. After about 30 minutes we had lift off, after practising the landing position a couple of times, you have a landing buddy and have to stand one in front of
Beautiful Mountain
View from Tranzapline train the other, bend your knees and hang on to the ropes inside the basket. We flew over Oxford and towards Christchurch. An hour of flying later and the pilot decided to find somewhere to land. After some communication with the bus driver to get him to drive near to where the pilot thought we would end up. However the first two attempted landings failed as we ended up skimming some trees and couldn't land in the first two fields because stags were in there. Finally we landed in the third field with 5 minutes of fuel left (true) and the pilot shouting 'HOLD ON IT'S GOING TO BE A ROUGH ONE' (not true), and of course I believed him! ha ha. We had an 'irish' flying toast and some welcome champagne.
This is my last blog in New Zealand, I'll never forget my time here. I've had many happy days here once I got over the initial homesickness in the Bay of Islands as I adjusted to travelling on my own again. I've had such moving, peaceful moments in the early mornings, listening to my favourite music and watching mountains as I travel on the bus to somewhere new.
Blue blue lake
View from Tranzapline train Looking at something really beautiful every day just brought home to me how wonderful this planet is. Also, how lucky I am to be able to be so self-indulgent for approx 7 weeks and see some of the most fabulous scenery and wildlife in the world; at a time where it is at it's most accessible, yet still largely unspoilt.
The next adventure is in San Francisco, I'm flying tomorrow pm, Christchurch to Auckland and then Auckland to San Francisco to see Angela.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 60; dbt: 0.058s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Gray
non-member comment
CU
Here ra, Mandy. I do hope we see you down this away again some day. Be sure you bring Dawn next time!!! Have a safe flight home. XX