the world's most boring town

Two weeks ago, Bryan and I visited the world's most boring town. We took advantage of cheap train tickets to Kaikoura, a town three hours up the coast that we had been meaning to visit since breezing through on the bus from Nelson in January, and discovered that 27 hours in this town is more than enough time to see all of its not-so-numerous and less-than-enthralling sights.

We left on a Wednesday and returned on a Saturday, spending the first 3 days tramping at Mt. Fyffe, which looms over the plains of Kaikoura and serves as the easternmost mountain in the Kaikoura Ranges. As it only takes 5 hours to reach the summit (and half that time to return to the carpark), most people do this hike in a day, but we spent two nights in cozy Mt. Fyffe Hut, enjoying the unbelievable efficiency of its wood stove and appreciating the view of the Kaikoura Peninsula and its beaches in springtime while snow was falling around us. We'd been planning to spend one night at this hut, reach the summit the next morning, and follow the ridge down on the other side to Hapuku Hut, but the amount of snow at the top was a concern and my out-of-shape self didn't need much of an excuse to take it easy instead. We had wonderful company in the hut on our first night - Benjamin, a 19-year-old German who has been a licensed glider pilot since the age of 14 (four years before he could legally drive a car in Germany), and Tally, a 65-year-old Coloradan who sold her house 8 years ago and has been travelling the world ever since (Alaska to Antarctica). She seemed to view New Zealand as a second home, this being something like her fifth or sixth time here, though she seemed to be viewing her current trip as the last one, or at least the last one for a while.

On Friday we returned to lower elevations, hoping desperately but futilely to hitch a ride for the remaining 10 miles into town, and limped into a holiday park just after lunchtime with painful blisters from my not-quite-broken-in boots. We paid way too much for a cabin that turned out to consist only of a bed (no blankets) and a breakfast table with two chairs, as we couldn't be bothered to walk any farther in search of slightly cheaper accommodation. The one highlight of this holiday park was its possession of the mysteriously-titled Jumping Pillow, which turned out to be exactly what it sounds like - a gigantic (15'x60'?), pillow-shaped inflatable that we are now determined to purchase for our church. The amount of joy that Bryan derived from this new toy alone was worth the $60 we paid for the night.

Kaikoura is known for two things: its whale watching tours and its seafood. As neither are in the least bit budget-friendly, we had to settle for cheaper activities, of which there are very few in existence. A person can only wander around Kaikoura's two-block shopping area for so long, and the cool breeze on the pebbly shore kept us out of the water, so we were thrilled to find that the one-screen historic art-deco cinema had a 7:30 showing of The Runaways, which we had been interested in seeing, and planned our entire night around this event. Our arrival at 7:20 brought us to an empty but open-doored theater, where a teenaged kid with a broom scurryied about without acknowledging our presence at the concession/ticket counter. When an older woman, who I assumed to be the owner, sauntered up a few minutes later, our attempts to purchase tickets ended with the discovery that this cinema is cash-only and the nearest ATM is a ten-minute walk away. This completely unadvertised policy was made even more frustrating by the casual way in which the woman shrugged as we expressed our disappointment and walked away. We sat on the rocks across from the cinema and watched as an older couple and a child (a granddaughter, maybe?) wandered in, but didn't see any other moviegoers that night. How is this theater staying in business?

On Saturday, again having nothing to do, we arrived at the tiny train station to wait for the TranzCoastal as early as we possibly could without looking completely homeless, breathing a sigh of relief when it finally pulled up and we were allowed to sink into its comfy seats on our way back home to beautiful, glorious, civilized, credit card-taking Christchurch. Our good friend Phil picked us up from the train station, which hides behind a shopping center ("there's a train station in Christchurch?"), and we threaded our way home through concert traffic from a free outdoor show in Hagley Park, where many of New Zealand's biggest names in music (Dave Dobbyn, Op Shop, Bic Runga, and others that I feigned knowledge of and enthusiam about) were playing in front of 100,000 people (a quarter of the city's population) as a sort of earthquake-survival tribute. It was good to be home.

-Rachel