23 December 2017
Today we handed over the keys to 3 Studholme Street and the little Ford Fusion. As always, these towns grow on me. I think we still favor Gore and Westport as places to live, but the people in Waimate are so kind and we were settling in nicely. It is not tourist-y at all, which was quite nice!
What was less nice was hauling our belongings down Wilkins Street to the bus stop. Others were heading to Christchurch via bus this morning, so we knew we were in the right place. The bus was chockablock.
We stopped in Timaru to drop and pick up passengers and give people a chance to pick up some food, then it was on to Christchurch. Gold seating was sold out, so we were with steerage in the upper deck. It was hot and stuffy up there. And it rocked back and forth on the winding roads.
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| Typical cabinet cafe |
The plan was a 45-minute break in Christchurch to change drivers (fortunately the bus didn't change, so we didn't have to claim our luggage). The driver announced that the bus for Kaikoura would be leaving the station at 2:30 and it was 2:10 when we arrived. I had scouted a place for lunch, but panicked about timing, so I forced R to grab the first thing he saw at the grocery store across the street from the station. I wouldn't even let him hunt down crisps to have with his sandwich. I'm that mean.
So we hustled back to the bus exchange where we sat until 3:10. It occurred to me that the air-con might not have been turned on upstairs in the bus because New Zealanders just put up with stuff, so I asked when we re-entered if it could be adjusted. And it was! There were fewer people, too, but we both wore sweaters for the remainder of the trip. It was windy and chilly in Kaikoura when we arrived, but the hotel came to pick us up and we put on coats and walked to town for tea.
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| Main street Kaikoura, where the bus dropped us off |
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| View of the Kaikoura Range of the Southern Alps through Norfolk pines. |
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| pohutukawa tree in bloom |
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