And we're off
Having had our plans for a European Christmas scuppered, we moved on to Seeing The Town Before We Left The Country and planned a trip down South to ride the Tranzalpine and see the family. Or, to see the family and ride the Tranzalpine, depending on who is reading this...
Wanting to see snow on the mountains, we opted to go in Winter. This would come back to bite us, although not literally like the midgies who would apparently have swarmed had we chosen a Summer trip. So there's always something! In our case, it was a "Red" Weather Event, the likes of which had never been seen (or had been seen three times in the last hundred years, depending on which media you follow).
This meant that our planned trip of Christchurch - Tranzalpine - Punakaiki - Overnight in Barrytown - Pounamu Tour - Tranzalpine back - Fly home became Christchurch - Tranzalpine - Punakaiki - Overnight in Barrytown - Violent Weather Closes Roads - Cancel Pounamu Tour - Discover Tranzalpine isn't running - Fail to get a bus back for two days running - Give Up and Flee to Hokitika airport - Fly Back to Christchurch. I am minimising the stress of these events, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Still, we're home now and all in one piece. My photos are substandard, but at least I got some, and we had some nice weather at the end. This photo is us on the train before everything went literally and figuratively downhill.
Loving that Hokitika photo! I mean obviously all of them are good, and the family ones best of all... But the sign with the sunset shining through is just so well composed!!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I must confess I saw a picture in an art gallery and decided to copy it. Then I crouched down to get the sun on the right angle, overbalanced, caught myself, overbalanced again, and landed hard on my backside, jarring my spine. The family would have laughed at me but they'd all walked on so my shame was only witnessed by a couple of hippies/freedom campers sitting behind me. Think the photo was worth it, though.
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