TranzCoastal

Our time in the south island began with a beautiful train ride along the east coast. We rode the TranzCoastal train through farmland, rugged Pacific Ocean coastline filled with hundreds of seals with the Kaikoura mountain ranges to our other side, and even through the vineyards heading into Christchurch-- the south island's largest city.

They say it's one of the world's most scenic train journeys (although we'd argue that the train from Seward to Anchorage might take the cake!) and we enjoyed sharing a table with a mother and daughter from Wellington. They had lived in NZ their entire lives and hadn't done this train yet. The mother (in her 90s) wanted to check this off her list before her time was up. We enjoyed visiting with them! We spent hours out on the open air viewing cart taking in the views of the mountains and coastline while enjoying the fresh air. The coastline was breathtaking-- bright teal blue water fed to giant rocks and shiny black sand which led to plush green mountains. We enjoyed the pod of ~50,000 seals that hang out along the coast, but were saddened to hear that their numbers were reaching all-time lows (they once had a pod in this area of more than 2 million!).

The beautiful Kaikoura coastline


Can you see the hundreds of seals blending into the rocks?

The train went through dozens of tunnels and over hundreds of bridges and took the better part of the day. As we approached Christchurch, the scenery changed to rolling hills like those you read about in fairy tales (is this why it's called the Canterbury region?) with mountains in the distance and spectacular vineyards in the foreground. We arrived into Christchurch at dinner time and took a shuttle to our downtown hotel in the heart of Cathedral Square (and right next to a large IBM building!).