New Zealand Travel Diary Part VI

The TranzAlpine Express goes from Christchurch to Greymouth on the west coast and back again. You can easily do the return journey in a day - perfect day trip. We just had time enough for lunch in Greymouth before getting back on the train. Of course, you could stay in Greymouth (although it doesn’t seem to have much of interest) and use it as a base for exploring the glaciers further down the coast, Fox and Franz Josef. If I had had more time, I probably would have done that, because I would’ve like to have seen the glaciers, but hey, I wouldn’t really have wanted to miss out on some of the things I did see, so no complaints.

The train has really great seats, very comfortable, and big panoramic windows. For the photographers, there is an open-sided observation car. The first hour or so from Christchurch is fairly uninteresting, as the route goes across the flat Canterbury Plains. From Springfield, you go up and soon after the fun begins. You cross glorious river gorges (the Waimakariri) over viaducts, you go through lots of little tunnels (19 in total), you cross wide plains where the river braids through, surrounded by mountains. I don’t think we saw many rivers that were not braided, and I found them fascinating. A braided river is a stream that cannot decide which way to flow, so it splits up into lots of little streams that meander in and out of each other, here illustrated by a picture from one of the gorges of the Waimakariri.

At Arthur’s Pass, high in the Southern Alps, you have to go back to your seat, because you’re not allowed to remain in the observation car for the journey through the 8.5km long Otira Tunnel due to the exposure to dangerous gases inside the tunnel. Then it’s on to more woodland plains and mountains and streams until you hit the rainforest area and the river Arnold, and then finally the river Grey shortly before arrival in Greymouth. It’s a really great trip, and if you don’t want to get your face and hands covered in soot by spending all the available time in the observation car, you can certainly enjoy it very much from your seat in the normal carriages.

Needless to say, I chose to get sooty, although I didn’t realize until we got off the train in Christchurch and I went to the bathroom to wash my curiously dirty hands. Then I looked in the mirror and this black face stared back at me. It was very funny. That’s what you get for standing in the observation car going through 30 or more little tunnels! But hey, small price to pay if you ask me…