Leaving the glaciers behind, and heading south again the area becomes even more remote – there wasn’t even a road through here until 1966 (lots of the single-road bridges proudly display the date) but the final section of ‘seal’ (as Kiwis call Tarmac) wasn’t laid until thirty years after that. The villages are minute although we did pass through one that had a church and school – but only six houses! The road follows the coast for a short distance but the mountains soon force it inland – the rainforest slowly giving way to forests of podocarps. These are the unusual species of pines in NZ which, needless to say don’t resemble pines anywhere else in the world, there is the Rimu or red pine which grows up to 60m and is very majestic, the Matai (black pine), the Miro (brown pine) the Kahikatea (white pine) and the Totara, which frequently lives for over 1,000 years and along with the Kauri (see earlier blog) was used by the Maori for making war canoes.
Under the canopy there are, of course, a wonderful array of ferns and tree ferns. After these forests the road rejoins the coast at the Haast coastal plain before passing through the three towns all with the name of Haast Junction and passing near to Haast Beach before heading off into the Southern Alps beside the (think you might have guessed this) the Haast River and going through the Haast Pass. The Pass had previously been used by Maori as a greenstone trading route and in the 1860s by gold prospectors but it was the influential Austrian geologist who came along in 1865 and named it after himself! As the road climbs and narrows the river also narrows and there are a number of stunning waterfalls – each with a short walk through familiar native bush, all with even more wonderful ferns and tree ferns. You will probably have gathered that our love of ferns (see our gardens at home) has grown enormously on this leg of the trip.
We soon entered the Mount Aspiring National Park with its snow-capped alpine scenery, although some people we met on the wine tour we did earlier told us how some Swiss friends of theirs had scoffed when they saw the NZ “Alps” – nevertheless it was quite impressive country and we had a picnic overlooking Cameron Flats, which is near Cameron Creek (and C forbade G from writing “is up the” on the sign between the two words already there) but the midges (we have discovered they are called sandflies) soon sent us back to the car and on we travelled. Once through the pass the verdant countryside gave way to quite a barren landscape of hills covered on golden grassy tussocks. The road travelled down the west side of Lake Wanaka and the east side of Lake Hawea, both being huge expanses of turquoise water surrounded by golden hills (actually bearing grand names like Mount This, Mount That or So-And-So’s Knob) before reaching the town of Wanaka.
Here we had to make a decision to go the long way to Queenstown on a road that is fairly straight (at least by NZ standards) or the much shorter (by about 60km) Crown Range Road, which twists and turns along NZ’s highest paved road. We decided to take the shorter route and were rewarded with some stunning views and very little traffic and so made good time.
We arrived in Queenstown in its very scenic location by Lake Wakatipu and overlooked by The Remarkables. Despite a lot of very recent modern development it is quite an attractive town, reminding us of some of the Lakeland towns back home. However Queenstown really exists to service the adrenalin seekers who come for bungy jumping, white water rafting, jet boating, river surfing and paragliding. What on earth are we doing here?
Forgot to say (but Jean noticed) – if a blog entry has an asterisk against its title it means it is the title of, or a line from, a song but we have stopped giving references but just in case you’re wondering today’s is by Brian Eno.
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