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Christchurch-Arthurs Pass-Ross
We thanked our Christchurch hosts, the Tuscana Motor Lodge, and got on the road on the next leg of our tour. They're in a good location on the north side of the CBD, maybe 15-20 minutes walk from Cathedral Square, but with good access to the airport and SH1. They were very helpful, and the room was great - cool, tidy kitchenette, good shower, able to provide breakfast, and a choice of wifi nets in range.
Taking the road west from Chch we crossed dozens of kilometres of the Canterbury Plains: so very very flat, reminiscent of the Fens, with lots of farming. The sky was entirely blue except for in the far distance we could see the Southern Alps, with clouds above them - a case study in orographic lifting if ever I saw one.
The Alps loomed closer and closer and then, suddenly, as we passed Springfield we found ourselves much closer to the forest and driving uphill. The road started to snake around the foothills in alpine fashion, with the occasional hairpins and ski fields, then flattened out for many km as we went up some valleys.
You know how I've been going on about NZ's unbelievable geography and how I've long since run out of superlatives? Well, it happened again.
We went up the Porter river valley, crossed it and did the same for the Broken river, both of which have wide rocky beds and just a few small running channels. Then we turned a corner and saw the Waimakariri, which was jaw-dropping (again). It is another wide rocky bed with a few running channels - the geography has obviously evolved to cope with some serious snow melt and rain - but this one struck us by its width. The bed must be somewhere between 500m and 1km wide. We took photos but there was nothing to give an impression of scale...
Leaving the relative flat of the three river plains, we found ourselves passing through a bit more forest before making the Arthurs Pass village for lunch. It seems to be just a little service village with (reputedly) extremely expensive petrol, but we only stopped for the food. There were signs everywhere warning us not to feed the keas (parrots; endangered; infuriatingly ingenious beasts which will steal just about anything, use tools and even have a go at windscreen wipers), though we didn't see any.
After the village was a little more climb before we got to Arthurs Pass itself, 920m amsl. We stopped at the lookout point... and our jaws dropped again. After the pass the road follows the Otira river downstream - or perhaps a more appropriate word would be that it plunges down the valley with the river. A relatively recent viaduct keeps it more manageable (16% gradient for 2km) than what I suppose it used to be - named the Devil's Corner, I'm not sure I want to imagine. The viaduct itself is some pretty amazing engineering; the road is elevated some 50-100m above the gorge floor, sweeping round in a curve; a plaque remarks that it has been carefully built so as to cause minimal disturbance to the fragile ecosystem.
A little way down there is another lookout point, which we almost didn't stop at, but I'm glad we did: we saw a couple of keas! They were pretty sleepy-looking in the heat of the day; they just sat there on and by the railing. One looked almost aloof that I was trying to take its photo; I half expected it to mug me later wanting $2 for the privilege :)
Further on down the road the Taramakau river is another wide rocky bed with narrow running channels, but what really boggled my mind was the utility poles which were mounted on the dry rocky parts in the middle of the river bed... I surmised that their positioning was probably the least bad option as the road was cut into the edge of the mountain and looked prone to rockfalls and landslips.
Finally we reached Kumara Junction on the coast and turned left to get to Ross. There were a couple of mad roundabouts which are fully integrated with level crossings: they have railway track running right over the central island. I've never seen anything like it, and I suppose it only works because most of NZ's railway network sees very little utilisation these days.
Ross is an old gold rush site. We went for a walk on the
Water Race walkway which goes past the gold field; some of the info boards point out that the folks who supplied water for the extraction made more money on average than the gold prospectors... This is frontier country again - and it felt like it. We walked down the main street, past the modern housing, but there was nobody on the streets. Even though we knew there were people in the old hotel round the corner, it seemed empty. The mining returned a few years ago with modern techniques but has since gone again; even though there are estimated to be tens of thousands of ounces still under the village, the vibe is that the villagers don't want the disturbance of the operation. Fair enough, I thought, but what else does your village have going for it? Indeed, as I write this from the motel room, there is not a single wifi net in range. Truly this is the back and beyond...
After dinner we went onto the beach to catch the Tasman sunset - and what a glorious cloudless sunset it was. The beach here is a mixture of sharp sand and rocks; the Tasman roars onto it in the same way it did on 90 Mile Beach and New Plymouth. The moon was almost full tonight, and we noticed that it was upside-down (think about it!).
We were expecting sandflies here on the west coast and got some locally-recommended repellent but so far they have failed to materialise. The worst is likely yet to come, later on our travels...
We thanked our Christchurch hosts, the Tuscana Motor Lodge, and got on the road on the next leg of our tour. They're in a good location on the north side of the CBD, maybe 15-20 minutes walk from Cathedral Square, but with good access to the airport and SH1. They were very helpful, and the room was great - cool, tidy kitchenette, good shower, able to provide breakfast, and a choice of wifi nets in range.
Taking the road west from Chch we crossed dozens of kilometres of the Canterbury Plains: so very very flat, reminiscent of the Fens, with lots of farming. The sky was entirely blue except for in the far distance we could see the Southern Alps, with clouds above them - a case study in orographic lifting if ever I saw one.The Alps loomed closer and closer and then, suddenly, as we passed Springfield we found ourselves much closer to the forest and driving uphill. The road started to snake around the foothills in alpine fashion, with the occasional hairpins and ski fields, then flattened out for many km as we went up some valleys.
You know how I've been going on about NZ's unbelievable geography and how I've long since run out of superlatives? Well, it happened again.
We went up the Porter river valley, crossed it and did the same for the Broken river, both of which have wide rocky beds and just a few small running channels. Then we turned a corner and saw the Waimakariri, which was jaw-dropping (again). It is another wide rocky bed with a few running channels - the geography has obviously evolved to cope with some serious snow melt and rain - but this one struck us by its width. The bed must be somewhere between 500m and 1km wide. We took photos but there was nothing to give an impression of scale...Leaving the relative flat of the three river plains, we found ourselves passing through a bit more forest before making the Arthurs Pass village for lunch. It seems to be just a little service village with (reputedly) extremely expensive petrol, but we only stopped for the food. There were signs everywhere warning us not to feed the keas (parrots; endangered; infuriatingly ingenious beasts which will steal just about anything, use tools and even have a go at windscreen wipers), though we didn't see any.
After the village was a little more climb before we got to Arthurs Pass itself, 920m amsl. We stopped at the lookout point... and our jaws dropped again. After the pass the road follows the Otira river downstream - or perhaps a more appropriate word would be that it plunges down the valley with the river. A relatively recent viaduct keeps it more manageable (16% gradient for 2km) than what I suppose it used to be - named the Devil's Corner, I'm not sure I want to imagine. The viaduct itself is some pretty amazing engineering; the road is elevated some 50-100m above the gorge floor, sweeping round in a curve; a plaque remarks that it has been carefully built so as to cause minimal disturbance to the fragile ecosystem.A little way down there is another lookout point, which we almost didn't stop at, but I'm glad we did: we saw a couple of keas! They were pretty sleepy-looking in the heat of the day; they just sat there on and by the railing. One looked almost aloof that I was trying to take its photo; I half expected it to mug me later wanting $2 for the privilege :)Further on down the road the Taramakau river is another wide rocky bed with narrow running channels, but what really boggled my mind was the utility poles which were mounted on the dry rocky parts in the middle of the river bed... I surmised that their positioning was probably the least bad option as the road was cut into the edge of the mountain and looked prone to rockfalls and landslips.
Finally we reached Kumara Junction on the coast and turned left to get to Ross. There were a couple of mad roundabouts which are fully integrated with level crossings: they have railway track running right over the central island. I've never seen anything like it, and I suppose it only works because most of NZ's railway network sees very little utilisation these days.
Ross is an old gold rush site. We went for a walk on the
Water Race walkway which goes past the gold field; some of the info boards point out that the folks who supplied water for the extraction made more money on average than the gold prospectors... This is frontier country again - and it felt like it. We walked down the main street, past the modern housing, but there was nobody on the streets. Even though we knew there were people in the old hotel round the corner, it seemed empty. The mining returned a few years ago with modern techniques but has since gone again; even though there are estimated to be tens of thousands of ounces still under the village, the vibe is that the villagers don't want the disturbance of the operation. Fair enough, I thought, but what else does your village have going for it? Indeed, as I write this from the motel room, there is not a single wifi net in range. Truly this is the back and beyond... After dinner we went onto the beach to catch the Tasman sunset - and what a glorious cloudless sunset it was. The beach here is a mixture of sharp sand and rocks; the Tasman roars onto it in the same way it did on 90 Mile Beach and New Plymouth. The moon was almost full tonight, and we noticed that it was upside-down (think about it!).We were expecting sandflies here on the west coast and got some locally-recommended repellent but so far they have failed to materialise. The worst is likely yet to come, later on our travels...