Storyline: Home to home westward
Well, we went South, as far South as we could, all the way to New Zealand. I wonder what New Zealanders say when things go wrong. Perhaps When things go North. What do you think? Write us a comment.
Leaving shortly after midnight on Sunday, after about 40 hours in transit we arrived early morning on Tuesday, losing all Monday somewhere on the way.
Auckland is a wonderful city for which we’ll have a separate post.
On day two of our stay, tired after a 20 something kilometer walk from the Pacific to the Tasman Sea, Alex was browsing the Web, when he happened on a video of the Waiho Bridge near Franz Josef collapsing after torrential rains the previous day (record-breaking 1000mm+ in a 48 hour period). This is on State highway 6, a major and only road on the west coast of NZ’s South Island. (Franz Josef is part of our planned itinerary). The highway is closed between Hokitika to Makarora with multiple parts washed away. 450 tourists are stranded in Franz Josef. Glad we are not with them. But we have to be there in 2 weeks… Our Airbnb accommodation here has no TV services and we have no idea where to look for more accurate information. So we use online tools.
As we started reading news we found more: Wellington is in a state of emergency – this is our next stop. Some train tracks around there are washed away. Will our Northern Explorer run on Saturday? The ferry between North and South Islands was cancelled due to 7 metre waves. We hope it will be OK by the time we get there. Arthur’s pass is closed – we take the TranzAlpine train through Artur’s pass from Christchurch to Greymouth. It goes on and on and on…
At this point we needed a plan B. If it wasn’t for another hiccup just before our journey started, I could just reverse the itinerary. But our nights in Christchurch are now locked. Our Airbnb host there cancelled just before we departed and we had to find alternative accommodation. Fed up with Airbnb we found a good place on Booking and to save some money we booked with non-refundable rate. After all we were going soon and could take the risk.
Before we decided on our Plan B yesterday morning, we read a bit more. Looks like the Northern Explorer will run on Saturday. Our host in Wellington says things are getting better. So going that far will be OK. The TranzAlpine route was suspended, but also looks like it is or will be OK for our trip. However, we still have to cancel the 2 buses: Greymouth to Franz Josef and Franz Josef to Queenstown. I have booked the cheapest fare which can be only canceled/refunded if they don’t run. We called InterCity, the bus company. They seem to think that by our time the road will be reopened. How? So “call as on April 8th”, they say. Hmmm… Here comes the question about our risk tolerance. If we wait to April 8 it will be too late to cancel accommodations at Franz Josef and Greymouth and redraw our map on the East coast. Coming from Canada, where rebuilding a bridge will take months if not years, we simply can’t believe that these people here think a bridge can be completely rebuilt in 10 days! Perhaps they know better, but what if it takes 15 days, what if foundations are damaged, what if… New Zealanders seems to be used to emergency repairs. The TV host we watched online thinks that the bridge will be restored in 2 weeks. With a smile and in water up to his knees, a lad jokes: “Imagine this in Auckland”, the same way a rural Canadian will say about Toronto. At Hokitika they are expecting huge floods from the high tides. The oldest man in the area says that he has never seen such thing. “What is your advice?”, the reporter asks. “Pray”, was the answer.
The mayor of the Westland region says that he’d be very disappointed if the bridge was not replaced in two weeks. Two weeks! Hey Canada, does anyone think a bridge can be replaced in two weeks? “The reality is this scope of disaster is not uncommon to be this size…let’s get it tidied up and move on.”, says the mayor.
Even if we avoid this problem (opportunity??), we are not completely out of the woods. Our accommodation in Queenstown is not cancelable, due to the high premiums for using the free cancellation rate. Then we stay in Te Anau and Milford Sound. Seems that things there are not much better. “A tour bus driver travelling on the Te Anau-Milford Sound highway yesterday had never seen Falls Creek swelling the way it was.” A meteorologist says that enough rain has fallen in Fiordland to fill 800 000 Olympic pools! And then there is Mt Cook. We stay there for Easter. Fingers crossed…
Perhaps we should trust the locals. If they are right, we’ll miss out on the west coast experience, but having only Northern hemisphere experience we don’t think we can take the risk. We’d rather lose the cost of 2 buses and be worry-free (sort of – this is after all an earthquake zone) for the rest of our trip. We do hope that mother nature is done playing with this beautiful land, at least for now, so we can enjoy our journey around Queenstown and Milford Sound. This is yet to come. But it does seem like New Zealanders shrug off these devastating weather events the way we at home shrug off blizzards and ice storms.
For now, instead of Franz Josef we’ll go east. Accommodations have been cancelled on the West coast and rebooked for Dunedin. One more thing. We do want to take the TrazAlpine to Greymouth. And I absolutely hate using the same route for return. But at this point we don’t have an affordable alternative (try a seat on the other side of the train – A). The road through Arthur’s pass is closed, but the train will run. There were a few cheap fares left, so there we go. I booked us on the train’s return trip.
And so, today we’ll enjoy the beauty of Auckland for the last day and tomorrow we are off to Wellington, where our accommodating host has already offered us a ride from the train station up the steep hill to his house to which our next Airbnb suite is attached.
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