On the way to Addington Station we picked up two more groups of people that also wanted to go to take the Tranzapline train.
Besides it being rainy and very uncomfortable the distance to the train would have been unwalkable even without the luggage, so it was a good decission to book the shuttle. The driver actually moved 30 years ago from the Netherlands to New Zealand and spoke a little German.
After we got out he told us " Das macht 10 Mark Bitte". But we paid him in Dollars.
The train station, that was located in a remote industrial estate was very small but also very modern and had big glass windows all around.
Surprisingly there was no coffee or snack stand to be seen anywhere, so would have to wait until we got on the train.
After a checkin like at the airport, we dropped our luggage to the luggage (train)car man who stored it somewhere and we settled on our seats in the new, modern and luxuriously train cars with overhead windows, that were specifically built by Kiwi Rail for the three scenic rail road journeys that New Zealand has to offer.
Our Train consisted of 5 of such cars, a cafe or restaurant car, an open viewing platform car and the aforementioned luggage car. All this was pulled up the mountains by two large Diesel Locomotives.
We had our four seats on the left hand side around a table in car E.
And perfect to the schedule we slowly rolled out of the small station at 8:15.
Our (and most likely all) seats had headphone jacks and with the supplied headphones we could listen to a commentary that was give about the places we passed. There also was a display with a map of our trip and the current position of our train. Pretty cool all in all.
The journey began with flat fields full of cows, crops and large water sprinklers that stretched for multiple kilometers across the fields.
Then after we had left the Canterbury plains we got into the the mountains and the train slowly wound it self up the curvy track, through tunnels and along deep ravines.
The landscape was stunning and we took turns in going to the viewing platform car, that was luckily directly attached in front of our Car E.
When at our table we listened to the mostly interesting information from our headsets.
After a good while we arrived at the highest point of our route: The Arthur Pass.
Here we could get out, stretch our legs and get a bit more fresh air.
The next 8 km were going to be through a tunnel that helped us to descent 300m of altitude in a straight line.
We then passed Lake Brunner nestled in some beautiful landscape and finally arrived in Greymouth with some delay at 13:15.
We got all our bags back and looked for the Motel but instead found an Irish Pub. "We only going to ask for the way" we reasoned our entry and it would have been rude not to order a beer.
So, 4 beers and a very long good chat with Dave from England later we exited the pub with directions to our Motel.
Dave was a great guy, a roadie for a couple of bands, he lived in NZ for a long while and helped kids get started and oriented in life.
He has been doing Kayak tours and was in the army and had plenty of stories to tell. He gave us some tips for the rest of our trip and sent us off to the Motel because he also had to leave to get to his Band practice.
We found the Motel quickly now and being exhausted from the trip or possibly even the beers we needed a good long rest of more than two hours before we could get up again and find some dinner (back in the same Pub) and go for a walk.
Greymouth was pretty quite after 9pm so I did have some time to catch up a little on the blog and read a bit in my book.
No comments:
Post a Comment