Driving from Te Anau to Haast on the West Coast

Tuesday 9^th January 2018

 

13 JANUARY 2018 – TODAY UPDATED MY BLOG WITH PICTURES – ENJOY!

TODAY’S BLOG IS WITHOUT PHOTOS DUE TO THE POOR INTERNET PROVIDED AT OUR MOTEL! WILL ADD THEM ON ONCE I HAVE BETTER CONNECTIONS!! HOPE YOU CAN ENJOY MY STORY WITHOUT THE PICTURES – ONLY TEMPORARY!

Had our breakfast again outside our Gypsy Vanner – warm and sunny and said goodbye to the house pets, Oscar the terrier and Victor the cat! We were ready to take on the long drive from Te Anau up to Haast on the west coast. When planning this trip I had looked up the distances and I registered 287km in 3hr.50mins.

Well at the end of the day we had done some 356 km and taken some 6 hours to get here including all the stops we made to take pictures, have coffee, visit the toilets (which I must say are really modern and clean all over NZ) and have lunch.

We started driving at 9.45 am and left sleepy quiet Te Anau quite easily – no traffic jams here – perhaps only when there are a number of campers touring around – otherwise quite alone on the road. Again I was the designated driver for the day with Gerry making an excellent co-pilot!  

Our first stop for coffee was at Garston having switched onto another highway (highways here are main 2 lane roads). Although a tiny little village with only 108 residents and a hotel and excellent public toilets, we found an information board (outside the toilet area – just in case you needed to wait!) describing the village as a gold mining village which started off with 2 sheep farmers setting up their farms here. Also notably is the fact that Garston, as a village stands right in the middle of New Zealand! Another fact the coffee was excellent!!

 

We continued driving along the Highway 6 and for the third time drove along Lake Wakatipu on our way to Queenstown. In Kingston we stop to fill up the car and then continued along the scenic route – we did stop one time and this was at The Devil’s Staircase – appropriately named due to the lookout punctuating the winding road and sheer rock formation leading down to the lake. Today the view was magnificent as we had clear skies! Incidentally this is the third time we are driving along the lake – first time with Ralph and Eve on our way to Queenstown, second time when we came down to Te Anau and now on our way up to Haast.

Continuing our drive, we sidetracked Queenstown and made our way to Wanaka where we would stop for lunch. Our hosts at Te Anau, explained to us that there were two ways of getting to Wanak – over the mountain range or round the mountain range – well for us we thought both would be good and did not make much difference in the time we needed to get to Wanaka. Anyway our GPS took us over the mountain range with Mount Cardrona reaching 1.936 meters. This road had so many hairpin bends and we kept on climbing till we reached one point where we stopped to take pictures and admire the views. Way down below lay Queenstown on the Lake Wakatipu – this was really a spot on top of the world with mountain ranges and golden rolling hills beneath us. Actually this pass, the Crown Range Summit,at 1.076 meters above sea level, is the highest sealed road in New Zealand. In 1860 W.Reese and and P.von Tunselman were the first Europeans to cross this pass in search of good pasture grounds for their sheep. Early in 1863, gold diggers used this route to get to towns such as Arrotown and Skippers diggings.

We continued from here on a descent and came to the quaint little village of Cardrona This was a popular place during the gold rush when its population rose to over a thousand – now it’s a sleepy village with hotel and only wakes up when the ski season begins.

Our next stop was at Wanaka – what a pretty lakeside town this is! Similar to Queenstown but more laid back – although there are quite a number of holiday resorts built on the outskirts of the town. And to our great relief, it was bright and sunny and temperatures reached well over 26 degrees. We sat outdoors to enjoy a salad lunch and of course Gerry had to have his vanilla ice cream as a desert. This was a late lunch and after a little walk along the lakeside, we just relaxed under a tree before setting off on our final leg of our journey for today! 

We were now wel on the way towards the Haast Pass with enough bends, high and low roads with waterfalls and gushing springs all the way. I imagined we were in Jurassic park, all the luscious ferns and various tints of green foliage surrounding the roadways – which dinosaur would we soon come across?

At one point we saw, what we thought snow up on the mountains but getting closer, we saw that these were melting waters – we had to get out of the car and the noise of the rushing waters was thunderous! A couple of photos snapped quickly and we were again on our way towards the ocean. After 2 hours we arrived in Haast but we still had a long way to get to our motel which I though was on the beach – well in actual fact it was but because it was so grey and rainy, we couldn’t tell the difference between sea and sky – We certainly could hear the waves crashing on the shore!!

Got ourselves settled in our motel and after freshening up, we thought of taking another drive to Jackson Bay – some 20 km further down – ands here we actually saw the Pacific Ocean! Mission accomplished!

Back at the motel, it was an early night – tomorrow we’re off to Franz Josef Glacier and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather gods will show us some clemency!!