After getting up early, packed and got on the bus at 8:30 after grabbing some breakfast at the bakery. The bus trip was long and pretty boring. I finished my book off. The music and movies were way too loud, but the driver refused to turn it down because he said some people couldn’t hear it. ( I later discovered that it was the stereo which was faulty, and was only loud in the back). The bus stopped at the usual bus stops – Cromwell, Lake Pukaki, Tekapo and Geraldine. The food at these places was usually very ordinary, but they have captive markets, so they don’t need to be good. Lake Pukaki and Tekapo were beautiful, as before. Mount Cook was surrounded by clouds, but was well above them at the peak.

Got to look at the water of Lake Pukaki close up this time – it is quite cloudy with only about 50cm visibility. The glacial “flour” is too fine to see the grains, and you can’t feel it either. After a lot of driving, and two movies I didn’t watch, we came to Christchurch. I should have just asked to be dropped at the centre of town, because the dropoffs took over half an hour, and I was last. I checked into Rolleston house, and set up my bed. My ideas of seeing the Hectors Dolphins before the flight tomorrow soon went out the window, as it would take far too long. I went into town, used the internet, got a pizza for dinner, and went to the “Regent on Worster” cinema again to see “The Pianist”. It is a movie about the Polish Pianist Spielman, and his experience in Nazi controlled Poland as a Jew during the second world war. I hadn’t realised the atrocities were as bad in Poland as in Germany. It left me wondering how things like that can come to pass, how people could do that to each other. I found I was the first to go to bed in the room, and didn’t even wake when the other three people came in.

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