Friday morning, March 3, 2023.

I’m riding the InterCity bus from Queenstown, New Zealand to Dunedin on the South Island’s east coast. It’s a four-and-a-half hour trip. And the bus doesn’t have a toilet.

What do passengers do when they get the urge?

Fortunately the bus allows for two pit stops. One is at Cromwell. This stop has a decorative wall. Photo from Google:

Farther down the road we have a longer break at Lawrence, which has public toilets as well as a convenient convenience store.

This particular store, Night ‘n Day, is part of a nationwide chain, the equivalent to America’s Seven-Elevens. I bought some fried fish for lunch, and they offered two patties of hashbrowns for NZ $1.00. Who could resist that?

Presumably the store gets lots of business from all the bus stop traffic.

The bus passes through some gorgeous scenery with the road meandering through mountain valleys.

I sat on the right side of the coach. I thought it odd that the sun wasn’t shining through the windows on my side. Instead, it was shining through the windows on the left side. Why? Because New Zealand is below the equator, in the Southern Hemisphere. It was an interesting sensation, having lived in the Northern Hemisphere all my life.

The bus made one more stop at Dunedin’s International Airport, 28.3 km from Dunedin itself. We unloaded at the heart of the city, the InterCity bus stop at 331 Moray Place, Platform K, outside the Countdown Supermarket. It was shortly after 12:30 p.m., plenty of time to walk to my pre-booked lodgings and partake of a local attraction.

InterCity also offers a Queenstown-to-Dunedin afternoon run from 4:15 p.m. to 8:50 p.m.