Bryan from Christchurch

Anybody want to buy a Canon EFS 18-200mm lens?

We woke up far too early this morning to catch a 7AM train in to Kaikoura.

The train journey followed the east coast through ranching and farming country. More sheep, but also cattle and alpaca. The wheat looked thick with long heads – a consequence of irrigation, I presume. As we neared Kaikoura the mountains joined the coast and the train had to skirt the mountains or tunnel through them.

The main attraction of Kaikoura is whale watching – a very deep ocean trench comes very close to shore here. Unfortunately, the whale and dolphin tours were sold out.

We were not too disappointed – we’ve both been whale watching before. Bethany in particular has had an Orca experience second to none. Besides, it was raining out and our colds were still bothering us. It would have been nice to swim with the dolphins, though.

Instead, we walked the town to check out the two stores that might be able to help us with our camera. Both of them did sell cheap digital cameras, but nothing that interested us.

So we changed our bus trip back so that we could get back to Christchurch before the stores closed at 4PM. Unlike the train, the bus goes around rather than tunnelling through the mountains, so Bethany got carsick.

We ended up picking up another lens identical to our broken one. It’s new enough that we should get a good price reselling it after ours gets fixed under warranty.

By now it was pouring, so we decided to catch a movie. Benjamin Button had a really hiu IMDB rating. It was OK, but the main impression we both had was that it was too long.

Tomorrow we head off to Fox Glacier.