Friday - the curse comes upon us

In the morning we were joined by Bob the cat.  Bob was a fluffy (once he/she dried off) black cat who came in, sat peacefully on whoever was nearest, and then wandered off again once there was nothing to eat.  We packed up and drove slowly back to Greymouth.  The road was open, thank goodness, and not too bad, though it was still raining.

Still, the trip was nearly over, so we wandered around the shops and rather let ourselves go in the pounamu jewellery shop, on the grounds that we'd saved the money from the tour, so it was fine, really.  Then we dropped off the key to our hire car (like fools!) and went across to check in for the return trip on the Tranzalpine, only to find that the train had been turned back due to a slip on the rails.

"How are we supposed to get back to Christchurch?" I asked, and the woman at the "help" desk shrugged and said "nothing's getting out tonight.  We've put on two buses tomorrow morning to get people back".  I thought about doing that trip in a bus and wanted to throw up, but bravely said "ok, then, I guess we have no choice".  At which point she revealed that the buses were both full and we'd have to wait until Sunday.

So there we were, trapped in Greymouth, with no accommodation, no transportation, a plane leaving in 19 hours from a city we couldn't get to, and a worrying lack of clean underwear, since I had instructed the children to Pack Light. 

Found a hotel, taxied out to it, and hunkered down to spend two sad rainy days until our bus was due.  I have to say, the people of Greymouth were LOVELY.  They were all sympathetic when they heard about our plight (I doubt we were the only ones Left Behind); on Saturday we took the children into town to kill some time and walked past the pounamu shop in which we had shopped not wisely but too well the day before.  The proprietors waved and came out to see why we were still there and then offered to drive us back to our hotel to save us the taxi fare!  But we explained that we were off to the cinema to watch Black Widow. It's possible that Alex considers this the highlight of the entire trip.