to Christchurch

Photos

We had to be outside the Scenic Hotel at 9:10am this morning. So we didn't have to get up too early and we enjoyed breakfast at the hotel. There were a lot of people from the Scenic waiting for that bus. All these last few days of buses/coaches have been operated by Inter-City. Evidently they have an app that lets people book bus rides/pickups/drop-offs as well as being booked by outfits like Pacific Destinations who are our local provider. The really surprising thing was the number of people who like us only spent one night in Franz Josef! That is crazy. It is amazing the number of people who are being sold this crazy road trip itinerary. There were probably 20 people on our bus who have been on buses with us all day for the last 3 days. This has been the road trip to end all road trips. We never want to travel again. And here is the thing, we are big fans of public transit but I had argued with our Kensington Tours agent Colin that this was too much coach travel all at one time and he disagreed and said it was well done. It was not. I would never refer anyone to this tour. I heard a 20-something backpacker whining this morning as he boarded the bus. He had been on with us yesterday too. He told his seatmate for the morning that he'd done almost nothing but ride buses for 3 days. He had gone to Milford Sound like us 3 days ago. Clay reckons we have spent over 25 hours on coaches over the past 3 days. The roads are clogged with the same buses we keep seeing over and over, so Colin is right that it is being sold but that doesn't make it right.

We were picked up by John the afternoon driver from yesterday. He is good, friendly, happy in his job, informative. This afternoon we had a woman, I believe her name was Nicole or Nicki. She was in a mood, snappish, angry, not very informative at all, terse to the point of curtness. The long period of unseasonable sunshine we had been enjoying ended as well. We had low clouds and rain most of the day. We drove along the Tasman Sea coast all morning and in the afternoon headed across the Southern Alps for Christchurch.

We arrived at a little after 6pm. We had been booked through to the train station since this last coach ride was the train replacement due to wildfires. So our luggage had been loaded on the other side of the bus. The bad news is that at the first stop at the bus station was a man with our name on a sign. Clay just happened to look out and see it. We ran off and asked him if he was for us to the Rendezvous Hotel and he was. Our luggage was not where Nicki would let us get to it from outside since it was on the other side of the bus. We explained that our driver had come here instead of the train station and she said it wasn't her problem. Clay almost had a stroke crawling through the bowels of the bus undercarriage and lifting the bags over the interior dividers from the other side. It was a fitting ending to the New Zealand road trip from hell. The driver that met us told us that yesterday all their train passengers had been put off the bus at the bus station and all the drivers were at the train station so today his boss sent them all to the bus station. Not really helpful. Then he told me his boss asked him to ask his passengers if they were having a good trip because they had some bad feedback. This was the first contact with this limo provider so I don't know what our trip to date could have to do with them, but I told him no we weren't having a good trip. This misstep didn't make us any happier either. The same company provides us a 3 hour Christchurch sightseeing trip tomorrow morning and drives us to the airport the afternoon of the following day.

Clay says it hasn't all been bad. The koalas were good (but not even in New Zealand) and Hobbiton was incredible and there were the dolphins in Milford Sound. I don't think Kensington Tours or Pacific Destinations gets any credit for any of that. You wouldn't fly half way around the world and spend over $7K for it.

Fingers crossed that Oceania and Australian train trips exceed expectations.

We ate at the Sampan House next door to Rendezvous. We didn't care for it. We walked around the surrounding street to check menus within a block of the hotel and didn't find anything for tomorrow night either.

So, we enjoyed the North Island portion of the itinerary and it was well planned and designed. The South Island portion was a hot mess. We have certainly seen some amazing landscapes and scenery though and more of it than we could stomach. The thing that has been most remarkable to both of us is the almost total lack of wildlife. There are hardly even any birds. So where a lot of parts look familiar, and like places you have been elsewhere in the world, here you miss the animals. It is hard to comprehend a land without any native mammals! (We didn't see the 2 kinds of bats.)

So, oddity note. As we walked around the hotel area, there were lots of lizard silhouettes embedded in walkways, benches, etc. We don't know what that is about since we hadn't heard anything about any lizards existing in New Zealand! Ah, I guess it just never came up.


Photos