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Published: February 7th 2011
2nd February 2011 After a slight panic at the distances we had to go to make the ferry on time last night we had agreed that we would move on this morning early to get a good drive in today. (I say on time in the loosest possible sense as we had no timetable but that which we had imposed upon ourselves and nothing was yet booked.) We had decided to see how far we could get so that there was no panic on about rushing the North Island and/or having problems with the ferry crossing. We had been told on hiring Paua that we would have to book the ferry between the islands in advance as it can get busy, especially at the weekends, and we were looking at getting there on Sunday, a Public Holiday called Waitangi Day, which we thought might make it even busier still (that or really quiet)
Anyway we got up and it was overcast and slightly drizzly which is far from inspiring weather for driving in, especially when the point of the drive is the scenery. We also realised that we had only shopped for our meal last night and
not for any length of time, thus after showering and packing up our first stop was the supermarket again, to get some food for the chilly bin.
With this task accomplished it relatively quick time, we headed out again to our next pit stop, the petrol station. Two down and one more chore to go, we pulled into McDonalds on the outskirts of Queenstown to utilise their internet.
On a quick aside, we have travelled all over SE Asia with more free internet access than beer at Oktoberfest, and now we reach the “Western Nations” we struggle to find any without paying a fortune for it - hence the ubiquitous Golden Arches of home, whilst not so prevalent here are met with delight, not for the tasteless cardboard culinary monstrosities that come from within but for their corporate policy of offering free Wifi.
On that note we entered and ordered coffee (but I was given tea) and I’m afraid we both succumbed to actually ordering some rubber food this morning as we hadn’t had breakfast yet and we didn’t want to stop again for a while. Once I moaned that the internet wasn’t working to one of
the acne faced school aged oiks that were working as opposed to continuing their education, it was eventually switched on - something we discovered we were privileged to have achieved as their was a lady near us that had been waiting for two hours for it to work and she hadn’t manage to find someone who could rectify the problem!
We then proceeded to take care of the admin functions that keeping a blog like this entail. This managed to pass just over two hours. In this time the weather had gone from drizzle, through a patch of clearing up, producing a rather brilliant rainbow, into glorious sunshine. Thus when we got back on the road I was doubly blessed, with being able to witness this beautiful countryside bathed in the sunlight which you can only truly have in clean mountain air, and more surprisingly to enjoy this wondrous sight from the passenger seat, as Lou had decided that today she would take the wheel for a morning shift of driving! It is a good job being a passenger by it’s very definition involves sitting down else I may have struggled with that bit of news.
Anyway we
ventured out onto the road, and in moments had left behind the remnants of Queenstown, and were onward into the country. Our planned route aimed to get us to Haast, which the atlas told us was only 210km away but would take just over 5 hours. When leaving at 11:30am it doesn’t leave much time for viewing anything that isn’t viewable from the road. Even more fortuitous then that the sun had come out.
We turned off the main road to take the shorter but steeper Crown Range Road. Here my astonishment at Lou taking the wheel was further compounded when she managed more than adequately as we drove up a road that had so many hairpin bends that a film maker hired to advertise an Italian supercar would be proud to use it. We stopped at one of the viewing stages near the top to look back down into the valley below at whence we had come, and once again the descriptive adjectives are wanting. Breathtaking views they truly are in this part of the world.
The zig zagging piece of road, akin to some potato masher’s design, was not the end of the climb however and
the van trundled on up the hill as we wove around further alpine passes. After we had paused for the roadworks, at this height getting going again wasn’t the easiest of things and the small queue behind us was a little frustrated. Some even overtook us in the midst of the roadworks, but being NZ a queue here isn’t anything like at home as there are only a fraction of the cars so it was soon gone.
We finally reached the apex of the road and it then turned into the valley between a number fo the peaks that make up this range and wound its way downhill in much the same meandering way that we had climbed albeit on a more gentle gradient. This gorge road was also stunning to behold, yet another type of stunning scenery in only a few kilometres, they truly make them in here, and we are wondering if they will run out, but here is no sign of it yet.
This meandering slowly receded as the road worked its way out of the mountain range and just as it was flattening out onto plains of crops, and grazing land we were upon
the first marker on our long journey, Wanaka.
Wanaka is Queenstown’s little brother, in all things adrenaline apparently and it too has a beautiful, boutique charm, with it’s lakeside setting. The town also has money that comes with these sports and the tourist dollar which was clearly evident from the shiny new buildings and plush looking lakeside apartments.
A roadside stop, and a driver change and we were off again. North out of Wanaka, onto the western shore of Lake Hawea. Once more another azure blue lake that looked like a postcard with a road alongside to allow you to sample its beauty, doesn’t this place get tired of it? This road hugged the shoreline albeit at a height, and afforded beauty at every turn, until we came to “The Neck.” Here we left behind Lake Hawea and crossed the small isthmus onto the shores of Lake Wanaka once more.
The scenery had gone from beautiful blue water on our right with mountains on our left, to beautiful blue water on our left with mountains on our right. The perfect road to assist you in case you could ever get bored in this place.
We continued
alongside the lake and into Mount Aspiring National Park. Now at home, entering a National Park may bring a change of scenery and you might start to anticipate that you would see some decent views, but here entering the National Park I was at a loss as to how the stunning landscapes could improve.
I was right they could not improve, so instead they just changed a little - equally as beautiful but subtly different. The lake receded as we drove up the river that had created it and we were suddenly in Alpine river floodplains. It was here that we chose to stop for our late lunch at Cameron’s Flats. A view up the river with our lunch of cheese and ham sandwiches. The sun was still beating down and so I consumed my lunch bare-chested in an effort to keep some of the tan that we have cultivated on this trip.
Back on the road and we went from flood plain to true Alpine gorges, and back into windy mountainous terrain. The decent on one particular road was truly severe with a huge escape lane on the left which climbed back uphill at such a steep
Thunder Clap Falls
or at least part of it, above that ledge was another huge fall.angle that I fear for any that ever have need of it making it through the dip at the bottom in the first place.
As we crossed a bridge we came to Thunder Clap Falls, where we stopped at for a few moments to view the cascading torrent of water. We just beat a coach party to the viewing platform, a short stroll down the forest track, and got a few pictures without a couple of dozen others in them.
Back in the van and onward down the Southern Alpine roadswe headed eventually reaching Haast the small coastal hamlet that signifies the end of the transalpine road. On checking the time we were pleasantly surprised that it was only around 4pm, this meant that any further along the road was a bonus, and as such we afforded ourselves the time to detour a little and go and check the beach.
Parking up in front of a garage on the deserted road, we walked through the tussock of grass onto the beach. The Tasman Sea in front of us was being whipped by a strong westerly wind, creating choppy uneven surf in the browny grey water. The equally
turgid colour palette continued on the beach as the sand was a similar colour and the myriad pieces of driftwood that had been washed up were all stripped of their bark and bleached of their colour being left an ashen hue. In places people had collected some of the wood into small barriers to the wind, much like the small walls of volcanic stones in the Canary Islands. However this didn’t do anything to dispel the bleak, wild, rawness of this place.
We checked the map once more and decided upon a place to camp a short distance up the coast. Back into the driving seat and on for the last push, driving through the least inspiring piece of road of the day. We pulled up at Lake Paringa campsite and set about making dinner in our sheltered spot, enjoying the last of the afternoon’s glorious sunshine.
A dinner of steak with salad, having shopped only that morning, was our treat for another day behind the wheel. Does it get any better than this?
3rd February 2011 We woke early to a light mist sitting around us, or was it low cloud?
Our van on the coast road,
taken from a piece of road that was coned off due to a rock fall. So hard to tell, anyway we hit the road and the sunlight tried to burn off the moisture in the air from behind the mountains giving us a beautiful drive to our early morning destination.
We were heading along the Glacier highway to the first of our morning Ice Flows, Fox Glacier. Within an hour we had arrived and although we weren’t the first at our destination, as the car park evidenced, there was nobody that we could see on the track and we headed out into the cold morning air, made even chillier by the presence of such a huge volume of ice.
The car park was in the shadow of the mountains but as we stepped into the valley that contained the glacial melt water the sun was shining brightly. The valley turned off to the left slightly, as we rounded the corner revealed to us was a frozen river of ice, from which the early morning sun was reflecting, dazzling us with it’s intensity as well as its beauty.
We walked up the artificially created walkway in the middle of the valley, on one side of us was the fast flowing melt water river,
Lake Paringa
our evening camp site the same grey colour as the terminal moraine that we were walking upon. On the other side of us was a small slow flowing piece of crystal clear glacially filtered water. Why these two bodies of water were so different we don’t really know but the comparison couldn’t have been more stark.
We reached the “viewing platform” on the side of the valley having climbed up the path - not that we could see anymore than on the walk along the valley path. With something as huge as this there is no “best” vantage point merely different angles. The sun was shining and reflecting off the glacier causing us to squint to see much, until a cloud blew over providing some blessed releif and the opportunity to take a few pictures.
Back down the valley we walked and back to the van for the next glacier of the morning. About an hours drive further north up the coast, we pulled off the main highway once more and drove up another huge glacial u-shaped valley. On arriving at the car park this time it was clear that we would not experience the same tranquillity that we had previously felt
at Fox Glacier as here the there were cars, vans and coaches galore.
Ignoring this we disembarked and headed along the wooded path to view the Franz Joseph Glacier, named in 1865 when it was discovered by Europeans, after the long dead Austrian emperor .
We came out of the wooded section of the path and in front of us the long valley stretched on until there we could see the terminus of the glacier itself. It was a bigger glacier, bigger valley and bigger draw with the crowds, as on the valley floor between us and the terminus were a plethora of sightseers in organised groups and going it alone as we were. The decision as to how far along the path we would go was made for us by the workmen doing maintenance to the track. This meant that where there should have been a bridge over the fast flowing, cold grey watered stream, instead there was only a couple of boulders and most people were getting their feet wet on crossing. With my only pair of shoes on, and Lou carrying a camera, meaning inevitable disaster had we tried to cross, we made an about
turn and headed back.
After all, as we had previously discovered, viewing something on this scale doesn’t require a close up viewing platform, and getting closer would only involve jostling with groups of people.
After returning to the van we headed back out onto the open road. These roads on the west coast are, if it is possible, more “open” than most others we have been on, and this obviously is recognised by the planners as they have some very interesting ideas on road management here.
Whilst driving onwards up the coast we passed a sign we didn’t recognise in relation to the railway and it was only when we were driving around the small roundabout that we realised that the railway passed through the centre of the roundabout! The roundabout had barriers on it which would descend in the event of a train passing through - why the road junction couldn’t have been moved a little I’m not sure. Whilst still gawping at this, we then passed another of these railway mini roundabout crossings, then the piece de résistance, a single lane bridge over a river, controlled only by a right of way system that may
Road through the trees
with mist in the distance. work if you could see the other end of the bridge, but in case that wasn’t good enough the single lane was also the train track, which again was decided by a right of way priority system!!!!!
I’m sure the lack of population is the only thing preventing more accidents (although the lack of health and safety in preference of common sense is refreshing)
We were getting hungry, so not that much further up the road we reached a town called Ross and simply had to stop. Whilst not really on the tourist trail, Ross has a past steeped in gold, quite literally. It was in the late 19th century when gold was discovered here, and in 1907 the country’s largest ever nugget was discovered, weighing in at 2.227kg and called the “Honourable Roddy.”
Now it is another sleepy town like the others, but with a couple of comical British seaside style cut outs for you to put your head through, and a few recreations of the old town. With lunch eaten we took the opportunity to investigate these “attractions” and actually quite enjoyed the light heartedness that came with it. Obviously I couldn’t help but picture
the town’s namesake, my older brother’s face in those cut outs.
It is a strange thing that Ross is a name that follows us on our travels - on our honeymoon the discount brand clothes store in the states bore that name and here this isn’t our first sighting either. Anyway with lunch and the comedy interlude completed we got back on the road.
We gpt back on the highway and didn’t verve off the nearly straightt road in any way until we reached Greymouth the capital of the West Coast, and more importantly for us the next McDonald’s on the road.
A couple of hours in here to update the world with another blog and we were on the road again. This time our destination was SH6 the west coast highway just north of Greymouth, dubbed by our Lonely Planet guide as in the World’s top ten drives! A high recommendation to live up to for sure, especially on an overcast late afternoon. We set out and once again, as we came through the first small satellite town to Greymouth and hit the coast, my mind instantly flipped to Cornwall. Maybe the greyness of the
day assisted me in my comparison, but it could have been a stretch of the north Cornwall coast. Stunningly beautiful, bleak, and rugged - even if the road was a touch closer to the water affording a better view than at home.
We stopped at a couple of lay-bys on the windy journey, before stopping at this stretch of coast’s main attraction - the Pancake Rocks and blowholes. These limestone rocks have been weathered in a way that makes them look like large pancakes have been placed atop one another in a rather haphazard fashion. This coupled with the arches and blowholes that the ocean has carved out make for a large tourist attraction. Unfortunately whilst the sea wasn’t calm, the tide was far enough out that the blowholes were not displaying any of their potential magnificence on this occasion. The short walk around the rocks wasn’t breathtaking in the way some of the other attractions have been but was nonetheless a lovely sight and deserved of it’s status as an attraction.
The remainder of the day was spent driving a not inconsiderable distance. We drove inland on the main highway into the last gasps of dusk before
Sunlight bathing the valley.
The view from the Fox Glacier car park. stopping at a campsite only about 100km short of Nelson. This campsite was the site of a proposed railway station, and came complete with a platform, but the railway never made it. The dream of a railway from Nelson to the west coast started in the mid 19th century and pieces of track were completed on and off from then until the late 50’s. By then the change in economics of gold, logging, and other commodities rich on the west coast, combined with the impact of two world wars, and the advent of the automobile finally rendered the project finished with only a few short stretches incomplete. This campsite was at one of the previously completed sections which have now had the tracks removed, but parts left for the sake of posterity.
Having started this blog unsure that we would make the ferry in time for Sunday, I finish it letting you know that not only will we indeed make it, but that the driving done on these two days now means we are planning to cross over onto the North Island a day earlier. Go us!
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