There And Back Again: A TranzAlpine Tale

October 7: Tuesday was a lazy day for me. I spent much of the day writing my article on the Summit Tunnel and reading French. Kara had a bunch of meetings, but other than that, we mostly planned for our end-of-week trip to Fox Glacier. We bought a bunch of food at Countdown in the afternoon to stock our suitcase for the trip, but otherwise the day was quite slow.

October 8: Wednesday had a very early start as we had to be at the train station before 8:00. From there, we headed to the West Coast city of Greymouth on the TranzAlpine Railway, something that my railfans would definitely enjoy. Just for the record, the train was once a part of a much larger network of 3' 6" narrow-gauged tracks that once criss-crossed New Zealand supporting its various industries. Politics over the past fifty years have shut down virtually all of these, leaving just the TranzAlpine, an East Coast excursion train, and a North Island track in tact for passenger use. All other remaining tracks are freight-only.

Anyway, so we headed west from Christchurch Station, passing through the Canterbury Plain and all of its cattle and sheep farms. There are relatively few crops grown in New Zealand these days, but cattle are a huge industry, replacing sheep since the 1980s. Above the plain, we passed through a series of beautiful gorges with fifteen small tunnels hopping between gulches. Below, a beautiful river ran beneath the cliffsides. Lots of photos along this stretch, to be sure. We finally went through a slightly longer tunnel and entered a much more mellow area within the Southern Alps where the wind blows strongly, rains scour the pastures, and few people can be found. At the top of this valley, we briefly stopped at the settlement of Arthur's Pass. From there, we then descended into the heart of the mountain, a tunnel stretching over 5 miles and requiring five diesel engines to ensure that the train does not run away. It took nearly 30 minutes to make it through this tunnel. On the other side, we entered the West Coast region, which is a temperate rain forest. The variety of trees increased exponentially from the other side of the mountains, while the temperature rose slightly as well. After another hour, we made it into Greymouth and quickly shuttled off to the intercity bus that was waiting for us.

The last three hours of the trip were less than ideal. Rain was lightly falling the entire trip to Fox Glacier village obscuring the views and the bus driver was an absolute speed demon. We made it to our first stop in what had to be record time and got a 25 minute break there. We then had a long haul to our final destination, which was also the last stop for the bus. We got in just before 6:00, finishing 10 hours of transportation. Too late to do anything, Kara and I took our room at the Glacier Inn and ate dinner from supplies we took with us, since restaurants are a fortune normally and especially when there are few options around. We went to bed early for the journey of the next morning.

October 9: Fox Glacier village is, naturally, named after a glacier, specifically one named Fox Glacier located just above the town around a bend. We joined a guided hike on Thursday morning and bussed to a parking lot just outside the glacier confines. From there, we hiked to an overlook above the glacier. The glacier had receded a lot since it was first discovered around 1850. In the 1890s, its end still peaked out around the bend and could be seen from the plains below the mountains. It receded continuously until the 1980s, when it began to grow again, albeit slowly. The group in charge of the tours once had a path that walked up to the top of the glacier via stairs, but now that stairs hangs overhead, hidden in trees, abandoned since the early 2000s when the glacier backed too far into the mountains. A landslide finally took out the access route to reach the stairs earlier this year. With the glacier retreating so quickly now, the tours are getting longer and going further up into the valley. But slides are also becoming more frequent and unpredictable, so government survey crew are constantly out there, ensuring the paths are safe for guided groups (non-guided groups are discouraged from hiking most of the trails).

After we returned from the glacier and had lunch, we hiked A LONG WAY (around 10 miles) to (and back from) Lake Matheson, a natural glacial lake that has long since become the home of eels and reeds. The lake is famous for its beautiful reflective surface, but a light rain storm in the morning mixed with wind in the  afternoon made the lake murky and decidedly not reflective. The lake, though, was surrounded by a nearly-tropical rain forest that was beautiful, though lacking in a sounds since only a few species of birds live in the forests here. Our walk back to the village was quicker than our walk there surprisingly, but we were disappointed that the reflection was so poor. We spent the evening watching a few TV shows and eating from our cache, anticipating the long day on Friday.

October 10: Friday was a beautiful day—a rare thing on the West Coast. Even the locals and bus driver noticed it. Unfortunately, we had another long bus ride back. We planned better, taking copious amounts of Dramamine. We also took a lot of photos on the way back since we passed various mirror lakes (that actually mirrored) and the ocean on our drive back to Greymouth. At our lunch stop, we had about 45 minutes to wander around a town that I can't for the life of me remember its name. The last leg of the bus ride was quick afterwards. In Greymouth, we got another hour of free time since the train arrived late to the station. We wandered the streets of the small city and checked out a few stores. We'll probably visit the place again when we tour the South Island later this year or early next year.

The train ride back was much the same as the ride there, except in reverse. The better weather meant that we got some more photos on the west end of the route, and the views of the river valleys were beautiful, as before. We got in late and picked up some battered fish from a local market. They were very good. I had to read some French when I got back because I'd forgotten the book on the trip. Oops! Otherwise, that was pretty much Friday.

October 11: Saturday was a breathing day where I mostly wrote my article on Wright & Sunset Park for my book. Seriously, this bugger took all day. We got fish again because Kara has gone crazy insane thanks to Good Calories, Bad Calories, a book I highly recommend it you never want to eat carbohydrates again. In the evening, we also finally got to see the first Marvel's Agents of SHIELD episode, something I'd been eagerly waiting for for about three weeks now.

More Musings:

• It rains constantly on the West Coast, like buckets of rain. In an average year, it rains 200 days and the rain is measured in metres rather than centimetres. Specifically, 9 metres of rain compared to roughly 1.5 metres on the East Coast.
• Cows have overtaken sheep in New Zealand over the past thirty years. The sheep industry apparently just doesn't do as well as the cattle, so farmers have been slowly phasing one out for the other. There are still sheep everywhere, though, just not as many as there once were. Cows now outnumber sheep in increasing ratios. I don't mind, though, because New Zealand cheese is tasty!
• Speaking of which, there are four primary types of cheese here: Colby, Edom, Mild, and Tasty. The latter two are a type of Cheddar while the first is well-known in the US and Edom is similar to cheddar but slightly softer. Other types of cheeses are also available here, but these four are the staple cheeses. None of them are offered in low-fat varieties, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to have them that way—they just wouldn't be the same.