West Coast Bound

March 29, 2010


Well we woke up seeing our breath this morning and everyone was up, breakfasted and ready to go except Connor. We woke him and he was at his grumpiest so we decided the only thing to do was throw him off a bridge – and that’s just what we did! We headed north out of Queenstown to the Kawarau River gorge. Where the highway crosses the gorge there is a beautiful hundred year old stone and wood suspension bridge which was the original track across the gorge. This is where AJ Hackett started commercial Bungy jumping and this is the bridge we threw Connor off (actually to be perfectly honest he threw himself off). It is a spectacular 43 meter drop into the gorge, you leap off a little platform on the side of the bridge and they fish you out on a rubber raft as you dangle over the rapids below. Connor jumped with no hesitation and he didn’t soil anything – we have the pictures to prove it. With that out of the way we headed north northwest through the Southern Alps to the west coast – Westland National park. This park protects the temperate rainforest as it meets the sea and is home to some of the most active advancing glaciers on the planet. The Fox and Franz Josef glacier move up to 4 meters a day and come down into the rainforest to 300 meters above sea level where they melt at the face and send cascades of turquoise fresh water via braided streams into the Tasman sea.

This trip while less than 300 km long took us over eight hours to cover much to the annoyance of John Cleese the voice on our GPS. It is time for a short treatise on New Zealand highways. First it would be difficult to differentiate one of their highways from our country roads. They are blacktopped however pavement must be in short supply as the lanes are so narrow our van has a foot of clearance on either side. All highways are marked for 100 km however only Mario Andretti in a Ferrari could manage this (although some of the local farmers in trucks give it a good try). For every 5 km of horizontal distance you have gone up or down at least a km and only travelled 3 km as the crow flies. Road signs are few and far between and often unusual like “beware of debris on the road after storm” or “sheep crossing” or dire warnings about falling asleep at the wheel – DrIvE. Bridges are a challenge as they only make them one lane wide and there are lots of them. I have finally figured the strategy for them is to approach them at high speed and don’t flinch, this gives you right of way. This combined with the need to stop frequently and gawk at the spectacular scenery means you don’t get anywhere fast. Our route took us up the mountains (20 km of hairpin turns which made the passengers quesy), along Lake Wanaka’s shores, through the Haast Pass of the Southern Alps and along the Haast River to the sea. While there was lots to see one particular stop at Bruce Bay was memorable. Here there is a stretch of the highway that follows the beach/coast for about a kilometer where the signage warns to watch for debris washed over the road after storms – and there are plenty of debris. Thousands of travellers have stopped here to write their names or poems on the smooth white rounded marble cobbles and build a structure or cairn commemorating there visit along the side of the road. Of course we stopped and build one of the highest, snapped a few photos and pushed on.

We didn’t arrive in Franz Josef until almost 6:00 at night and I was fried from driving. We camped at the foot of the mountains in the middle of the rainforest where as expected it was raining. We are hoping of a break in the weather tomorrow to hike into the face of the glacier – we will see if Mother Nature cooperates.