At Haast we had turned ever northward heading eventually for the ferry at Picton. I had left these few days of the journey unplanned but then realised that I probably hadn’t left quite enough time for off map excursions and weirdness.
I was, of course, completely wrong.
The coast road was beautiful, offering many opportunities to explore.
We stopped at Fox Glacier for a night, a frontier town that looked as if it had been recently built. By this time we had realised that New Zealand motels are all built to the same spec, almost as if someone delivers them in a box, but the views of the glacier from just up the road were exceptional.
I would love to say that we set off the next morning with our expectations raised but the opposite was true. There had been a major rain storm a few days before and the road had apparently been washed out but people seemed fairly confident that they were letting people through. Just beyond Whataroa we saw the traffic – there were no warning signs at all before this – and we hit a very New Zealand traffic jam. Everyone seemed chilled, the road would be opened for ten minutes on the hour and, heh, the sun was shining. What’s not to like.
In New Zealand they called this a mudslide. In any other country in the world they would call it “half a mountain washing away” including all the massive trees, boulders, rocks and, well, mountainside. It had happened three days before but the road was open the day after the incident due mainly to one man named “Wild Child” who owns the “biggest dozer [bulldozer] in New Zealand” and drove it up the rivers to the landslip and then through the piles of mud to open a roadway for the other local contractors to get in. I love him. Sure enough, on the hour, the road opened and we drove past the waving workmen (honestly they do wave to you) and onwards.
The next stop was Hokitika, as you can probably read from the branches in the sand at the beach. This proved to be a charming town with a great cafe for second breakfast, a great beach with a lovely woman selling Pounamu (of which more later) and then a sign to the Hokitika Gorge. Well, it had to be done!
The water here is the most unusual shade of green coloured by glacial flour from the stones ground down by the tons of ice above; the bird life was abundant as, of course were the sandflies.
And then on to possibly the most random of our choices for an overnight stop – Westport. It was essentially a choice between Greymouth and Westport and I think we were swayed by the name of the town. I mean, do you want to stay in Greymouth? We did however visit Greymouth and, boy, were we relieved that we chose Westport because we visited their number one restaurant and it was a lifeboat at the end, and I mean, the very, very end of their pier.
But that self same Lifeboat served the best homemade dutch Stroopwafel ever with fresh dutch filter coffee and real, real dutch drinking chocolate. Gorgeous.
As I said, we were so relieved that we hadn’t decided to stay in Greymouth, it did seem the most uninviting place.
Until we got to Westport.
This is a picture of the centre of Westport at night, like 9.30 at night. We had walked for miles and had a very reasonable meal at Johnny’s (mainly because he was open).
But the town did have its moment of redeeming weirdness for Wendy when we discovered this, the ultimate Sylvanian Families window display.
So, the next morning, after a suitably strange breakfast we headed off towards Picton and the ferry to the North Island. All went well, we passed through some not too interesting places (phew), lots of gold mining and coal mining towns mainly until we dropped into the Marlborough Valley, passing the vineyard where the South Island adventure began. It was after two hours of roadworks and traffic that Wendy dropped her next idea. “There is this little road, look,”
“I’m driving.”
“Anyway,” she continued,”it goes through Havelock and shouldn’t take us too much longer.”
“Has it got roadworks on it?”
In hindsight that was the wrong question. I should have asked “does it have any straight bits?” The Picton to Havelock road was a stock road used to herd the sheep and cattle from Linkwater to Picton until some idiot in 1915 decided to drive a car along it, a feat remarkable in both its heroism and absolute stupidity. We did manage to stop and the handbrake held.
The journey did have one redeeming, absolutely typical Wendy Off-Map Moment when we stopped at the Queen Charlotte Tavern at Linkwater.
There must be a story here but I fondly imagine that the family have recently inherited it from their great-grandparents and decided to do nothing about the decor.
It was just charming, and the food wasn’t half bad.
The road got worse, if that was even possible, and Wendy told me that some of the views were nice as we dropped into Picton.
To Middle Earth and Beyond 
Oops…should have warned you about that road. It’s the only time Alastair felt travel sick whilst driving! He complained that every bend had bends on it!!