I'd descended out of New Zealand's South Island mountains, with a quick stopover in Christchurch to catch the Coastal Pacific train. My Uber arrived at 6:15 a.m. to get me to check in at a train station 3 km away (I've been away so long I'm starting to think in km!).

This was my second visit to the 1993 Christchurch station building, set behind a sort-of lifestyle retail development complex in the first ring outside Christchurch’s core. It only serves "tourism trains" operated by Kiwi Rail and tour operator Great Journeys. On my first visit, I arrived by bus as my TranzAlpine train journey had been cancelled due to poor weather. I've learned not to count on anything that relies on good weather in NZ.

The station building is small and practical, more than enough this off-season day for the roughly 50 people who boarded the train. One thing that consistently surprises me is that check-in processes for tours, buses, and trains generally do not require anything more than providing your "family name"; no scans, no ID, no tickets.

This Sunday, I took the train only half of its route - to Kaikoura rather than Picton - and then alighted for a five-night stay because this train only runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In my travel planning, I anticipated a need for a break after the "hectic" sight-seeing of the mountains, and Kaikoura was meant to offer that break. It did exactly that.

The Coastal Pacific train eased out of the station heading north. The cars had big windows for unobstructed viewing, and seats were spacious and comfortable, with two-thirds remaining empty. There were only three seating cars, plus an open-air viewing car and a cafe car with airport-quality offerings compared to AMTRAK - a range of sandwiches, baked goods, yogurt, heatable main dishes, beverages and snacks, and as always, espresso-based specialty coffees.

As we got further from Christchurch, the sun rose and hills gradually emerged from the misty, flat farming fields; they were super-sized, green "Teletubby" hills cut by an occasional stream gorge. For an hour we passed cows, sheep and farmed deer as the hills grew and grew, until finally we emerged onto the coast. The tracks skirted the shore in each cove until meeting the cliff and the tunnel through, and then we emerged into the next cove. Twenty minutes of this in the open-air car was the perfect precursor to arrival in Kaikoura.

Above: Sheep on “Teletubby hills”

Below: As the train runs along the shore just south of Kaikoura

I was the only person from the train to hop off in Kaikoura. The station is at the town beach and on a beautiful, sunny, 60-degree day, I had no issue taking a seat, watching fisherpeople and looking at the water while waiting an hour until check-in time at my AirBNB. I quickly learned exactly how small Kaikoura (population of 3800) is when there was no Uber car to be had; luckily, there is a local taxi/shuttle service.

It was not easy booking a place to stay in Kaikoura, so I ended up about 2 km from the edge of town, on the other side of a tall, green ridge of farms and adjacent to the "South Bay", where the marina was located. Being a small town organized linearly along a highway, everything is very spread out, with a 3 km linear distance from a hotel at one end of town to the brand new grocery at the other end. So, facing a 10 km round trip for groceries, I was well-positioned to get a lot of walking in.

That walking provided a variety of splendors along the way.

There is a stunning and quite long coastal walk beginning in the South Bay, complete with seal viewing, that I was lucky enough to do on two brilliantly sunny days. Limestone cliffs, broken limestone beaches with white, sea-rounded beach rocks featuring ancient coral divits, and limestone sea-beds making the water a brilliant azure. There were ample birds to view: many grey herons, oyster catchers, paradise ducks, silvereyes, and a few that the Cornell Merlin app could not help with. Returning to my base included a chance to introduce myself to a couple of the local horses.

I learned late in the week from a Kiwi couple on the trail that those limestone shelves emerged from the sea after an earthquake in November of 2016, and it was a whopper, too: 7.8 on the Richter Scale, lasting two minutes and with many aftershocks to follow. The quake left behind a 160-km tear in the earth, landslides, and collapsed homes. There aren't many roads in New Zealand (in part due to topography) and the main highway through Kaikoura from Christchurch to Picton was left in a shambles, as well as the freight-and-passenger railroad trunk line the Coastal Pacific uses. Kaikoura had food, water and supplies airlifted in for months afterwards. Remarkably, the road and railroad were reopened a little less than a year later. New Zealand is a land actively reforming itself in current times. (There was a small earthquake as I typed this!)

My cut-through to town was an off-road path between subdivisions, up a steep path carved into the side of a tall-pine gully, with dappled sunlight poking through. It is owned and maintained by the Crown (the New Zealand government). It emerged from the pines onto a wide-open green hilltop with a wide grassy lane between farm fields, from which I could observe white mountain peaks in the distance, nearby cattle that I often heard mooing, or the resident chicken flock. It never got old. I always stopped several times along the path to marvel at the quiet, romantic beauty of it all. From there, I could turn left onto the street network to connect to the north side of town, or continue straight into a forested, steep downward path to the south end of town and its beach at the north end of the limestone cliffs.

In the South Bay, instead of larger white limestone rocks, the beach is composed of small charcoal stones; they must be volcanic. Each of my footsteps sank in to the ankle, accompanied by the chimes of jillions of little stones. It doesn't seem possible to have a beach like this in the midst of so much limestone in the area. The sun was strong, and mist obscured the mountains across the bay. On this walk, it was windy and almost warm enough to leave behind a jacket but not quite. The air was super-fresh, as it was everywhere in Kaikoura and even more so than in most places in New Zealand.

It was a very quiet week in Kaikoura, with few people around. It seems this shoulder-season period there means nothing much to do. Whale watches were going out but I’d heard the whales don't return for a few weeks; turns out that wasn’t really true. Swimming with the dolphins and kayaking sounded like chilly events when the daily highs are generally in the 50s. A peek into the local library yielded a lonely librarian; shops are empty, and a stop into a diner at 11 meant I was the only one there. My days were spent walking the countryside. Kaikoura has become somewhat of a meditative experience for me, and restorative in that regard. I think they call it "vacation".

My AirBNB hosts have been wonderful here, and everywhere I've been. This Kaikoura couple has crayfish pots, and they shared an extra crayfish they caught with me. It was the size of a two-pound lobster, and looked so very odd with two "arms" coming straight off the front of its body, sans claws. Perhaps the oddest thing was that the shell was so soft, you could crack it between your fingers, and the very, very neutral taste was a surprise, too. My hosts provided "crayfish dipping sauce" too, which turned out to be a slightly sweet curry sauce - unexpected! A cultural experience.

The second half of my train ride on the Coastal Pacific launched the following Friday, heading for Picton and the ferry to Wellington, capital of New Zealand, for a four-day stay.