The Long Journey North

My brother and I left Dunedin on the bus bound for Christchurch at 12:50, meaning that we had spent nearly exactly 24 hours in Dunedin. Like the last trip along this route, this was going to be a long one, nearly 7 hours although we did stop in an interesting town along the way. This trip was part of the Invercargill-Christchurch run so while the road was the same, the breaks were at different places.

We headed back out onto the coastal road to Christchurch having made it over the hills of southern Otago. It wasn't particularly exciting except that it was here that I finally saw the snow-covered Southern Alps. On the trip down, they had been conspicuously absent and I can only imagine for reasons of optics. I have a feeling that blowing snow in the Alps caused the sun to reflect in such a way to create a haze, obscuring the mountains. I was now very glad to see the Southern Alps again and even though they are not the highest mountains in the world, there's something about them that makes them awesome.

Onward the bus went, passing through a myriad small towns until we reached the larger settlement of Oamaru (pronouned AW-mah-roo). This was once a major center during the Gold Rush years and its former prosperity is reflected in some of the local architecture. It is also known for the Oamaru bluestone, a type of rock used extensively on the South Island for construction. Since we had half an hour at this stop, I took the time to walk around the town and I took some photos of interesting buildings. Very quickly, though, we were back on the road.

One of the problems with taking a bus trip like this is that there are so few stops until you reach the major centers, so there really isn't much to report. Most of the photos I took were of the mountains as we drove along the coast. Except for a quick stop at Timaru, there wasn't much to see until we finally got off in Christchurch.

When my brother and I finally got home, we were quite exhausted. In our trip, we had seen much of the South Island and I was happy to have finally seen the portion that I had missed the last time around. While not as captivating as the highlands of central Otago and Canterbury, my time along the south shore was very rewarding. I think I'd like to go back as soon as I could.

I couldn't stay up too late since my flight was at 06:45 the next day. I fell asleep sorry to be leaving but also dreaming of the high mountains and the pounding surf of the Great Southern Ocean.