The Southern Alps
(or maybe Middle Earth)
Today we leave Christchurch and head across New Zealand to the west coast, so after breakfast I load the luggage in to the back of the Subaru station wagon we have hired for our stay in New Zealand and set off to cross the Southern Alps!
Our first we head for is Springfield, this is in the rural area of the eastern coastal plains, the road here is still reasonably level and we have not started to climb yet.
We are still seeing many of the giant hedges that we saw on our way to Akaroa yesterday, and in the distance we see the Alps rising before us, they look even higher than they are because there is a white cloud over the top of them. It is this cloud that gives New Zealand its unofficial name “Land of the Long White Cloud”
Once in Springfield we stop to have our morning cup of coffee and a quick look around, before continuing on our way to the eastern beginning of the alpine road. A short distance out of Springfield I had an opportunity to pull over to the side of the road to take some photographs of the Alps. It is then that I notice that not all the white on top of the Alps is cloud, some of it is snow, and this is still officially Autumn, in a few weeks the road we are about to drive may be closed, as it is likely to be covered with snow and Ice!
Soon we cross a river and then we start to climb into Alps. At the first real entry to the alpine region “Porters Pass” we have a chance to again park our car in the safety of a rest area, and look at the road behind us and ahead of us, with an opportunity to take some more photos, it is here that Carolann reminds me that the 3 movies that make up the full story of “The Lord of the Rings” was made in this part of New Zealand, and we start watching for things we have seen in the films!
It is not long before we see “Castle Hill” and recognise this as one of the places in the films, with the exposed granite rocks, a stark grey against the green of the grass and the blue of the sky. As this was autumn the grass was no longer green, but more of a green-brown, as it was dying off ready to be buried under a blanket of snow.
Soon we were at “Lake Pearson” and the “Waimakariri River,” the water in both of these places was clear enough to see the bottom, and we are told that it is cold and good enough to drink by dipping your cup into them and drinking straight from the cup without boiling the water first!
The reason it is cold and clean is that it comes directly from the melting snow, and there is nothing here to pollute the air! The higher and further we went into the Alps the more snow we saw on the mountain tops, and the more granite was exposed above the tree line.
When we reached “Arthurs Pass,” we knew we had reached the highest point in our journey across the Alps. Here we stopped to refuel not only the car but also ourselves. Though there was no snow in the town, we knew it was on its way, it was already quite cold and the café already had a welcoming fire going in their fireplace to warm the guests!
After lunch, we had our usual walk and looked into the shops, here the shops mainly catered for the tourists, selling many souvenirs and postcards, with photos of the area when it is covered in its winter blanket of snow.
From here we continued west, slowly going down to the coastal plain, but before we descended too far we saw (and drove on) a new stretch of road, built like a bridge, after passing under what appeared like a ski-jump across the road!
Later we found out that the “Ski-Jump” was not built for skiers, but for rocks and boulders. It appears that this area (Otira) has many minor earthquakes which caused the road to be closed for long periods of time, before it was safe to clear the rocks off the road!
The “Ski-jump” is only a narrow slippage area, but further down the area was too long for this simple solution, so a new road was built, mainly following the river but above the river, now any slippage that happened simply went under the road.
Now we were on the western side of the Alps and the weather was taking a turn for the worse, we had lost our blue sky, as the clouds closed in around us, we were in for some rain, luckily the rain only fell while we were still in the alpine region and then it was only light rain.
Once we were on the coastal plain, we did not have any more rain though it remained overcast. We arrived in “Greymouth” at the mouth of the river grey and found a delightful place to stay for two nights
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