October 11th, I had to test the efficiency of New Zealand's transportation systems. From Christchurch to Picton by bus, then from Picton to Wellington by ferry, and from Wellington to Auckland by plane. I had bought the tickets in advance, but if someone was delayed by just an hour, the whole plan would fall apart... I didn't want that to happen. The morning turned out to be wonderful. I woke up at 6:00, had breakfast, and was at the bus stop by 6:45, where I still had to go through a simple registration for the flight and exchange my electronic ticket for a regular one. When I entered the office, I saw two women, one of whom was a pure-blooded Maori. I handed her the papers, and she suddenly asked me in perfect Russian, 'Shevchenko?' I didn't even have time to react, and she added, 'Russian?' I was completely amazed 🙂. Then she continued in English, saying that her husband is Russian 🙂. At that moment, the second woman in the office woke up and exclaimed, 'YOU HAVE A RUSSIAN HUSBAND O_O?!' In general, the morning turned out to be positive for everyone 🙂.

Like any other city in New Zealand, Christchurch has a botanical garden and a local history museum. I don't like museums, so there won't be many pictures from there, but the botanical garden is there mmmmmm...

Christchurch is the oldest city in New Zealand. It officially received the status of a city in 1856. The town has preserved buildings from those times, many century-old trees, species unknown to me, growing for hundreds of years. In 2010 and 2011 Christchurch was hit hard by earthquakes and most of the historic buildings were destroyed. Now the city is just beginning to climb out of this disaster. It is noteworthy that one of the first buildings rebuilt after the earthquakes was the Art Gallery building.

After being in the hills of Picton for almost 5 hours, I was already strongly wishing I could sit for longer. And such pleasure was provided to me by a transportation company with the interesting name of Nakedbus. The name is so "borderline foul" that one US hosting provider abruptly banned me by IP just for trying to write that word on a New Zealand forum 🙂

So, uh. ahead of me was to enjoy the views of New Zealand from the windows of a naked bus for 6 hours. I can tolerate such long sit-ups easily enough, so I wasn't even worried. In fact, it turned out that on the way the views were so enchanting that I forgot to realize that it was practically pointless to take photos from the bus window, and shot the whole way without stopping. In 6 hours about 180 frames were accumulated, of which 30 and a penny were more or less suitable for publication.