Public transport is not used much in New Zealand and generally isn’t that great. I’d hate to have to travel around the country relying on it. We only got the train as we decided we could see the country from a slightly different perspective that way, and with the special offer price of $49 each one way, it was much cheaper than buying the petrol to drive down!
You can drive from Auckland to Wellington in about 10 hours easily enough, including some quick food breaks. The train doesn’t rush… It takes 12 hours to get there! Thankfully we knew it was going to take that long so we arrived at the train station fully prepared with our sudoku books and other things to occupy us for the day. Surprisingly enough the first 10 hours went pretty quickly... The train is now geared completely towards tourists. It has an outdoor viewing platform, which is good to get out into to blow you awake again, though the fumes aren’t so nice out there! Also, the end of the last carriage had a big window and a comfortable seating area so you could get a really good view of the countryside as we travelled along. The picture here is of Mount Ruapehu.
Throughout the day the staff would tell us about the areas we were passing through over the intercom. As well as some quick stops along the way to pick up passengers, the train stopped at National Park for half an hour where most people had lunch. We just had a cuppa as Mammy Oosty (our lodgings landlady) had sent us off with rolls and ham. There was a food carriage on the train also to keep us going for the day.
The last two hours of the trip dragged a bit as the sun went down so we had nothing to look at but our watches until arriving in Wellington! Despite the long day, the train trip is a really great relaxing way to see the country, especially if you were lucky like us to get nice weather. Only do it one-way though! The train only runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, so we had decided to fly back up to Auckland instead, a decision we were quite pleased with by the end of the train journey.
Alan (our Irish friend who has just moved up from Christchurch) met us at the train station in Wellington and we went out for dinner with him that evening before taking over a spare room in his house for the weekend.
On Saturday we were focused on just one thing – the match. I have to admit that this was to be the first match I’ve ever gone to in any sport with the exception of canoe polo and a couple of Olympic Handball games Pauline convinced me to play in for DCU a while back. So, needless to say I was quite excited that my first game would be an Ireland v All Blacks rugby match!
After a good preparation lunch we went into town to pick up our tickets, armed with plenty of warm clothes and a good jacket as, despite the fact that it was quite a nice day at that stage, miserable weather was threatened. The day stayed fine until about half an hour before the match when it all changed. We were just about to set out for the stadium when the heavens opened and a gale started blowing up from Antarctica! Some of you may have seen Brian O’Driscoll being interviewed after this match when the interview was actually cut short cos the poor guy was shivering so much. We were actually very lucky in our seats as we had paid for the cheap seats that weren’t under cover, but we were close to the covered seats and the wind was blowing from behind us so the rain only just blew over us and hit all the people below us. A couple of friends of mine weren’t so lucky and we met them shivering and soaked to the skin after the match – they went home pretty soon afterwards.
The match itself was good, though we didn’t win. I’m sure those of you with any interest in rugby were watching so I’m not going to analyse it! We were pretty cold by the end of it, but at least we were dry. That is, until we went to leave. The exit from the stadium involves walking a long way on a platform over the train station, which has no shelter. We got a pretty good wetting while walking back into the town. Of course, we can’t complain after seeing how miserable the poor folks who were sitting in the rain for the match were!
That night we continued on to celebrate our existence (well, we couldn’t celebrate winning, or deserving to, and I think we were still celebrating something, maybe just being Irish and great!) into the wee small hours.
We spent the next couple of days wandering around Wellington again before getting a plane back up to Auckland – much quicker than the train trip! The flight wasn’t even delayed!
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