Last day in New Zealand.

We made it through the tropical rain from Franz Joseph to Greymouth and caught the Transalpine Express train to Christchurch.  A note about the weather….. it “poured” nearly all the way to Greymouth.  At times I could barely see through the windshield, which is not a good thing in the twisty, mountainous roads out of “Glacier Country” and into the coastal region. 

 We arrived in Greymouth with plenty of time to spare, dropped off the car and walked a short distance to the train station to get our tickets and check the bags.  With the rain still coming down from time to time, we walked through the town and found a lunch spot with Wi-Fi access and caught up on a little email and world news.

 The train came right on time, but the fog and rain obscured the countryside.  After an hour or so of the 4+ hour ride, the viewing started to clear a bit and improved thereafter.  By the time we reached Arthur’s Pass, the only direct, west-to-east route over the alps at this point, the weather improved significantly.  For the next couple of hours we saw wonderful scenes of mountain tops, trestles over gorges thousands of feet deep, 15 tunnels cut through solid rock, alpine meadows and pasturelands and various other scenes.  There were even a few towns—very few, obviously at this altitude and remote location.  At one point the “guide” pointed out the remains of the original dirt road used by the horse-drawn carriage to transport passengers from one coast to another—many years ago, of course. That must have been some journey under those conditions. A paved road currently exists for vehicle traffic, but gets closed frequently due to weather conditions.

The sight that intrigued me the most was the vast fields of gravel and boulders (from baseball-sized to watermelon or even VW bug-sized) accompanying the many rivers down the mountain side.  At bends in the rivers, the gravel accumulates into huge fields or “washes” as one traveler described those— many of them hundreds of yards across and extending for miles before, during and after the curve of the river is completed.  I can only imagine the amount of water it took to drag this amount of rocky debris down the slope.  One of the local folks we met recently commented on the sound that the rocks make at night, as the water pushes them over and over down the gorge.—especially during the spring floods.  

 The mountains soon gave way to broad pasturelands filled with sheep and cattle, and before long, acres (and miles) of lush green fields of vegetables and other crops.  As the train pulled into the station, we experienced a vague sadness that this part of our “downunder” experience was over, but this was pushed aside by the memory of the many awesome scenes and activities over the last ten days.  I am sure that I will have more to say about this after we get home to Rhode Island.

Now we sit in the Christchurch airport, waiting for our plane to board.  It stops in Wellington, then on to Sydney.  Tomorrow we catch the Qantas flight to the US and home and are looking forward to sharing these many scenes and experiences with our family and friends in person.

 

April 13, 2012

 As you can see from the date above, we are already back in the US, but there is a little catching up to do on the our final few hours in Australia.

We arrived promptly in Sydney and took the shuttle to a nearby airport hotel—the same one where we stayed after the thwarted Great Barrier Reef trip a few weeks ago.  We got a beer in the hotel “pub” bar and retired early—knowing what the next day of travel might bring.

We arrived at the Sydney airport again around 11:30am on Thursday morning and went through the various

immigration and security checkpoints.  For some reason the airline changed our intended seats on the plane placing each of us in an entirely different row.  The Qantas representative at the check-in kiosk managed to re-seat us into economy “premium” seats—an upgrade that provided quite a bit more space and comfort than we would have experienced with the original selections.  The plane, one of those mammoth two-deckers, soon loaded up and by 2pm we were on the way eastward to Dallas/Fort Worth.

 Not much to say about the ride, but we were quite comfortable and presented with food and drinks several times over the next several hours.  We arrived in Dallas at around 2 pm the same day (after a 14-hour flight) then headed for the 6pm flight to Boston.  To make a long story sort; we stuffed ourselves into 2 regular “economy” class seats and arrived in Boston at about 11pm—again still Thursday.  I report this, not to bore friends with the details of international flight, but to call attention to the fact that all this travel (some 20+ hours) took place during the same day.  I think this is just another example of this time-disorientation/time-travel that I experienced from time to time during the course of the trip. 

 Everything worked out ok, though and the driver we booked was waiting Logan airport with a nice, gray Lincoln Town Car for the trip home.  So we spent roughly the next hour practicing all our Australia/New Zealand stories on him—sort of a rehearsal, I think, for what might happen when we get together with friends and family over the next few weeks.