18/2/15

Dear Diary,

Today is a travel day for me where I enter the second phase of my trip. I break away from the warm and easy embrace of traveling with family and being driven everywhere and having packed lunches made for me every day. Now I will have to fend for myself for the next ten days as I pinball all over New Zealand before I eventually ricochet back to the family again in Nelson.

Catching the bus from Dunedin up to Christchurch airport, then catching a flight to Wellington to watch the England V. New Zealand game on the 20th may seem like a round about way to watch England embarrass themselves but when I was originally looking at how to get from Dunedin to Wellington I found a pretty cheap direct flight, then I went to work for the day and when I eventually got home all the cheap seats were gone. The only remaining seats were going at four times the original cost. Wife was so annoyed at me that she wouldn't let me pay the inflated price and for ages I thought I would be hitch-hiking all the way up the South Island (giving up the ticket or missing the game was never an option!). So I was glad to eventually find a bus that would get me to Christchurch airport where I could pick up the cheaper end of the flight on to Wellington even if it did mean getting up at 6am for it, which is pretty early for a guy like me.

Mum packed me a packed lunch for the road and has made enough ham, cheese, and tomato sandwiches to last until the end of the world, or the end of the World cup, whichever comes first.

The coast road out of Dunedin is incredibly beautiful and I sleep through most of it but typically I’m wide awake for the boring, flat grounds closer to Christchurch.

An uneventful flight is a good flight and the scenery of Wellington as the plane comes in to land is the most memorable thing about it. Wellington looks beautiful from the air. Even hillier that Dunedin at a quick glance and the shuttle bus from the airport to my B and B confirms it. There were audible gasps from the back of the shuttle bus as we wound our way all over the city and through some of the most narrow and winding roads I’ve ever seen in a developed country. As we rounded one corner I foolishly looked out the side window and saw the cliff drop away directly into the seventh realm of Hades itself and I envied the people in the back seats as they were blissfully oblivious to how their lives actually should be flashing before their eyes the way that mine was.

Made it to the accommodation safe and sound (the driver didn't understand why people always made such a fuss about the journeys) and upon checking in was completely blown away by the view of wellington and its harbour. And not just a small piece of the vista, the whole thing. All of Wellington stretched away below with the complete harbour unobstructed from view. In one panorama. It was more than the eye could take in in one go, so I stood there drinking it all in for quite some time, getting drunk on the scenery.

A text from Mase (my ‘almost’ sister) bragging about how lovely their accommodation was in Invercargill where they moved on to, snapped me out of my staring contest with the window. But I let her think she had won, a photo won't do this view any justice so there's no way a text message would.

I felt I had already won just by being here.
Tomorrow I will wander down the hill and explore it without a plan. Adventure awaits.

"Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it." Jules Renard - (1864 - 1910)