I’ve been keeping my eyes out for funiculars! The Wellington cable car is the most famous funicular here, but there are literally hundreds of privately owned ones that people use to get to their houses that are up steep hills. The cars are very small and the rail they go on is often very steep! When you see the staircases next to them you can see why they would want a funicular. Funny thing is when I’ve met people who have one it is almost always the case that it’s in need of repair and is out of order.
Before I left this morning, I got to help Mary and Owen with the assembly of their annual Christmas card. I’ve been the lucky recipient of this card that includes a family photo and top 10 lists for the last 20+ years. Sometimes a family member or two have to be photoshopped into the picture due to living away from home, vacation, etc. This year a picture of Joseph at the Golden Gate Bridge and one of Bridget and her family in London were incorporated in. It was so cool to be involved in the process of getting this year‘s one out to everyone, and Mary was delighted to be able to hand-deliver mine!
I took the Northern Explorer train from Wellington to Auckland today. After getting through the city and suburbs and going down the coast aways (going past where I hiked the escarpment track earlier in the week- I saw one of the swing bridges that I hiked over!) we headed inland, saw lots of farmland with sheep and cows. The last car on the train is an open air observation car, it’s pretty humid out so it’s quite comfortable being out in the fresh air. I am lucky enough to get a window seat and did not have anybody sitting next to me – this is the way to travel. It’s definitely a lot more roomy and comfortable than being on an airplane!
As one of the train conductors said at the start of the journey, this train doesn’t have WiFi, but it does have Windows Live, to operate it just look to your left or right. That is my type of technology and I took full advantage of it. I still can’t get over how green it is here, I’m just stunned by the simple beauty of hills with trees, green grass and sheep dotted around the slopes. Also seeing the very full, rushing rivers, I’m so used to seeing dried up river beds or trickles where there used to be reading rivers.
The train travels many places where there are no roads, so I’m getting to see some areas of New Zealand many Kiwis don’t even see. We have gone through several small towns that were bigger in the past when the trains stopped for passenger food breaks and rail was an easier way to get around the North Island. Now they are mainly small farming towns. One of the towns we went through was Ongarue which means ‘Place of Earthquakes’, maybe it’s not surprising that it’s a very small town!?
The train has a café car where you can get breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, hot and cold beverages and even beer and wine. Like most standard cafes they also sell date and cheese scones (not mixed together, they are two different types of scones!). As I are my lunch I saw kids on their farm waving as the train went by and lambs getting a snack from their mothers.
One of the amazing parts of the trip is going through the Raumati spiral, an engineering feat. It was built to navigate a steep section between a volcanic plateau and valleys and gorges on the other side. The spiral includes a horseshoe curve, two 90° curves, two tunnels and one full circle -it felt like every time we turned the corner we saw another part of the track directly below us that we were eventually going to travel on.
Passengers can put on headphones to listen to an audio commentary about various geographical, historical and cultural areas along our route. I learned that 99.5% of the trees in New Zealand are evergreens, so no wonder it is so green here. I also found out that Kauri trees were cut down for use in rebuilding houses in SF after the 1906 earthquake.
As we got to the end of the trip I realized that I had not seen any homeless encampments by the railway stations or railway lines. We are definitely not in California.
After a long day on the train (11.5 hours), that because it was so beautiful and comfortable went much faster than expected, we arrived in Auckland where it was quite humid. I got to see my friend Courtney for the first time in 27 years!! Of course, neither of us have changed in that time. 😉 I spent a wonderful evening with Courtney and her daughter Emily talking about a variety of subjects from political leaders to school uniforms to our countries respective banking systems. Then it was time for bed!
