scenery overdose

The moving-around and looking-at-things phase now begins following the morning-reset Christchurch-based few days. This will initially be by train to Greymouth thence by rented motor car to lots of other places if the rental-request thingby was honoured which I doubt as the website looked as if it was experiencing some difficulties. I was slightly wary about the train on the grounds that it might be construed as the sort of thing which might be full of codgers twice our age and was mostly correct to think this although there were a few seatsful of youthful Doncastrians-by-their-accents at the back of our carriage and the odd other unwrinkled face dotted about the place. Maybe it's a little more mixed during the high season.

Oooh. Pretty hills and trees and mountains and clouds.

No confirmatory email from the car rental reseller and none of the desks at the station had heard of us so we just went with one of the two initial target agencies who have a compatible drop-off point at Dunedin. Never driven a Corolla before; doesn't look too big but is significantly bigger than the thing I usually timorously drive when I have to. Not quite enough bootspace for both big bags without some repacking, though; although a silver car pretty much screams "RENTAL!" to any passing opportunist thieves we are at least covered by travel insurance if all things are concealed within the bootspace.

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I definitely struggle to find decent pictures of hills and mountains and stuff (and bumped one for a picture of the bloke above who was originally going to be a link); if they happen, they happen but expending hundreds of shutterclicks doesn't make them happen any faster. I'm slightly concerned that it might be disapproved of to return home with random pictures of the hairy ears of people sitting in front of me on the train across the NZAlps or of people photographing anything and everything indiscriminately as it passes them by at sixty windy miles an hour rather than returning home with ready-to-frame pictures of hills and mountains and clouds frothing about their tops and glaciers and fjords and wee single-track multi-purpose road/rail bridges, oh my. I'll maybe have a quick go at a combination night/scenery shot now in order to get away from the sounds of drunken revelry from the adjoining motel-style accommodation units though I expect the stairs going up the outside of one of our walls will provide hours of amusement when we try to get to sleep.