I woke up very excited, as today I'd be completing my South Island journey by riding on the Tranzalpine, famous for the scenery along its route. It is a five hour journey from Greymouth to Christchurch, but first, I'd need to make the drive from Franz Josef up to Greymouth to return my rental car and board the train.

I departed from Franz Josef and headed north on SH-6. There is not of note on the first stretch of the drive except for the beautiful scenery. The road passes through a couple of tiny towns before it passes through Hokitika, where I stopped to grab a bite to eat. I purchased a pepper steak pie from Stone Oven Bakery, and drove a few hundred meters down the road to park next to the beach and enjoy the view along with my food.

After another half hour of driving I'd made it to Greymouth, the capital city of the West Coast region, the least populous region (New Zealand is divided into sixteen regions, and so far I'd visited four of them: Canterbury, Otago, Southland, and now West Coast). I took an opportunity to stop at a laundromat and wash my clothes before packing my bags and heading to drop off my rental car outside of the train station. I went inside the station and checked in. The woman there printed off my boarding pass, and instructed me to drop larger bags off at a conveyor belt for them to be checked free of charge. I then headed across the street to Speight's Ale House to wait for the train. Just as I was entering, the inbound train from Christchurch arrived, and passengers were disembarking for their hour-long break in Greymouth. Inside the bar I had a nice apple cider and washed some basketball, there was a National Basketball League (NBL) game between Brisbane and New Zealand on the TV.

At 1:50pm it was time to board the train. I was in carriage D, seat 3A, a window seat on the right side. There was no one seated in the rest of the row for the entirety of the journey.

All passengers are given headsets, and there is commentary available for most of the journey. The commentary is mostly about the history of the regions we are passing through, and it provided a very detailed explanation, but it was pretty difficult to identify exactly what features they were talking about in the distance. The journey goes through the coastal rainforests along the West Coast, then up into the Southern Alps, then finally down through the Canterbury Plain before arriving in Christchurch.

At the rear of the train there was an outdoor viewing car, where I enjoyed the fresh air and escaped from the glare of the train windows that made photography hard. Carriage C was the cafe car, and there was a variety of foods on offer. I had a piece of carrot cake for a snack.

After about two hours the train approaches Otira station and stops as the crew temporarily shut down the outdoor car and the cafe car, and attach a second locomotive to the rear of the train. We were about to go through Otira Tunnel, which is an 8.5km long tunnel through the mountains that also gains 250m of elevation. There is an elaborate fan system in place to help exhaust the fumes from the tunnel, and passengers aren't allowed outside due to the fumes. At the other end of the tunnel is Arthur's Pass station, where passengers can disembark for five minutes and take in the scenery. Arthur's Pass is the highest operational station in New Zealand at an altitude of 740m.

As we began our descent down towards the Canterbury Plain we entered the most scenic portion of the journey, as the train winds along a series of viaducts and through some tunnels through the mountains and over river gorges. The gorges are gorgeous.

Finally the train reaches the Canterbury Plain and calls at Springfield, where a good number of passengers get off, and we continued the remainder of the journey through the farmlands as we approached Christchurch. I disembarked, got my luggage, and took a very short Uber ride to Jailhouse Accommodation, a former jail that is now a hostel, where I'd be staying the night. I can now say that I've spent the night in jail.

Right around the corner from the hostel is Afghan Restaurant, which came highly recommended by many online sources. I entered and found a couple of Afghani men dishing out food to a long-line of customers who were waiting for takeaway. Since I was planning to eat in, I was able to skip the line and sit down and eat right away. The food was NZ$20 and a drink was NZ$2, and for some reason they didn't want me to use my foreign credit card (possibly to do with fees), but they also did not have any change for NZ$25, so they just gave me an extra kabob instead. I think it was a fair trade, as the food was absolutely delicious. I think this meal ranks #1 for middle eastern food I've ever eaten. I don't really know what anything was called, but there was an enormous plate of rice, a lamb kabob, two chicken kabobs, and some chicken legs in curry, along with a salad.