The TranzAlpine

Yesterday Greenpeace New Zealand launched its most important campaign ever - Sign On. It is part of the campaign on stopping climate change. The goal of the campaign is essentially to mobilize New Zealanders to demand the prime minister John Key to go to the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December and sign on to a emissions reduction target of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, along with the rest of the world's developed countries. This means getting names and signatures of as many as possible in New Zealand before the Copenhagen meeting.


What makes the Sign On campaign really cool is the wide variety of NZ celebrities that have become ambassadors for Greenpeace for the course of this campaign. There are actors (Lucy Lawless / Xena: Warrior Princess, rarrrr!), businessmen, a Nobel prize winning scientist and other high-profile New Zealanders. This shows that the concern for climate change transcends demographics. It is often said that the only thing holding us back from tackling global warming is a lack of political will. Well, the purpose of this campaign is to create that will; to show the politicians that this is a threat the people wants action on. It is, after all, now or never.

On the launch day fundraisers and volunteers in every city and town where Greenpeace is active in NZ hit the streets collecting signatures. Together with nine other volunteers I braved the rainy and windy streets of downtown Christchurch for two hours. The terrible gale and the heavy showers made our work difficult and less than pleasant, but it reminded me of my days working as a street fundraiser for UNICEF in Helsinki. I enjoyed it. In the weeks and months to come leading up to December we will do this several times over, but also arrange events of different kinds to give people the possibility to sign the petition. It's quite exciting, although I won't be in NZ long enough to see the campaign to the end.

Speaking of which, today I only have 6 more weeks left in Christchurch. This means half of the time here has already passed, rather quickly if you ask me. This also means I need to keep on rolling out these blog posts of past adventures on a once-a-week basis if I want to be able to start from a clean slate when I jump on the bus in early July and leave Christchurch. Which brings me to the topic of today: the great TranzAlpine train journey between Christchurch and Greymouth.

The TranzAlpine train steadily climbing higher and higher approaching the Southern Alps.

In the previous blog post I told you about our four day hike along the Kepler Track. Basically what happened after that, was that we drove to the Queenstown area, spent a couple of days there, and continued to Christchurch. I'll tell you about Queenstown in another post later on. In Christchurch we attended the DramFest '09 whisky festival, which we have already covered, and waited for a week or so until Giigan's parents Jaakko and Eeva-Inkeri arrived on the 6th March.

Together with them we travelled the South Island for the next 10 days. The first journey we did together was the TranzAlpine train journey, which is allegedly one of the "world's great scenic railway journeys". It is certainly good, albeit perhaps a bit over-marketed when it comes to the superlatives. Leaving Christchurch, the train traverses the green fields of the Canterbury Plains, wounds its way along the gorges and river valleys of the Waimakariri River, takes Arthur's Pass across the Southern Alps, and pierces wet beech rainforest on the West Coast before arriving in Greymouth. Greymouth lies by the mouth of the Grey River (hence its name) and has a history of gold and coal mining. It has a bleak feeling, maybe reminiscent of those old days, not making it a top destination in NZ according to our opinion.

We took the train to Greymouth early Saturday morning on the 7th March and arrived by early afternoon. We spent the night in Greymouth in a motel, before catching the afternoon train back to Christchurch on Sunday.

The train journeys were comfortable and very enjoyable, despite the grey and rainy weather. Being a scenic railway journey, the train has a special open air viewing carriage which means you don't have to snap photos through the windows. We spent most of the journey to Greymouth admiring the views, whereas the return trip was devoted to playing cards (Pidron).

Enjoying lunch and sparkling wine before the card game on the return trip.

Despite not possessing the most excitable and welcoming vibe, the town of Greymouth still has a few things worth checking out. It's a good 30 minute walk from the town centre to the pier at the mouth of the Grey River. On the way you can gawk at the small fishing boats in the harbour, or if you're lucky with the weather (unlike us), catch a glimps of Mt Cook, the highest mountain in NZ. Once on the pier, it's fascinating watching the waves from the Tasman Sea crash into the flow of the Grey River, and listening to the music of thousands of rolling pebbles dragged back and forth on the beach.

Giigan and Jaakko on the pier by the Grey River.

The Monteith's brewery is perhaps the biggest attraction in Greymouth. True to our quest to visit as many breweries in NZ as possible, Giigan and I had booked the four of us in on a tour late on Saturday afternoon. It was a very thorough tour of the brewery - definitely the best we've been on here - and naturally included samples of the full range of Monteith's beers at the end. Monteith's is one of the biggest breweries in NZ brewing crafted beer, positioning it neatly between bulk beer like Steinlager and the beer of a true connoisseur, like Moa. If you want quality without having to pay a fortune, Monteith's an excellent choice.

At the bar in the Monteith's brewery.

In the evening we had dinner at a seafood restaurant and enjoyed a few drinks at a pub in town. Back at the motel we admired the emerging moon from the balcony for a while, before the eventful day caught up with us and we all went to bed.

Dinner at a seafood restaurant in Greymouth.

On Sunday we had time to walk down to the seashore again for some more photos, stroll through a Gypsy market, and play a round of minigolf, before the train left. It was a good, relaxed weekend - a prelude to the fantastic road trip we put together for Jaakko and Eeva-Inkeri. More about it in the next blog post!

As usual, MORE PICTURES available by clicking this link.