OLDFART BIKERS' PAGES

Day Four

Reasonably early start from Hokitika: needed to be, because it is already becoming plain two weeks ain't anywhere near long enough!  Also travelling is slow when driver keeps hopping out of car with camera every couple of kms.  And I'm still missing the shots I want. 

A long day it was, 513 kms to travel from Hoki to Arrowtown, without allowing for sidetrips and stops.  Tragic doing it in the car: it was a great ride nineteen years ago, and a huge amount of work has been on the roads since then, not even any metal left on the main routes at all.  Back in the day the old Katana used to eat up the shingle roads at just under 100kph (backing off for corners, of course), but personally I've always found the SI shingle easier to ride than NI metal.  Anyway, that's all changed, and I'm in the cage.  two words describe the feeling: Bugg Ah!

Started with a circumnavigation of Lake Kaniere, which was in fine reflective mode for the camera,  then shot off down the Coast.I was aiming for Okarito for coffee and photos, but the first of the day's wet fronts caught us just short of there at Whataroa.  Thereafter it was gonna be stupid standing at the boot of the Vectra fart-arseing around with a thermos, so we got coffee at the store where we were, and forgot about the Lagoon photos.

It rained crowbars all the way to Bruce Bay: Rusty ducked out of the car briefly to point out the Bruce Bay sign for his Dad, and Jean wanted every one of the Bruce Bay Driftwood Sculpture Phantom's artworks photographed, but it was declared too wet.  (Plus the WHOLE beach is covered with driftwood art graffiti: I think tourists have taken to helping the Phantom by adding their sculptures.  I don't get upset by bra fences, or jandal fences or hubcap trees, but for some strange reason I see Bruce Bay as rural graffiti.  Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder: I think my butt-ugly Beemer is beautiful.  To each their own, for art, but if Jean wanted photos, then she shoulda took her own.)

The rain had moderated to a fairly ordinary downpour by the time we hit Haast township for a lunch break, but it turned into a WET Coast special as we headed up the Haast River towards the Gates of Haast and Haast Pass.  It's an ill wind that blows no good: I had to tuck the camera up my jumper every time I hopped out of the car for a camera, but the number of waterfalls was higher than on a dry day!  The Gates of Haast is an amazing spectacle, where some giant Valhallic Teenager seems to have thrown a collection of house sized rocks down the gully in a sulk.  Once through the Gates, the rain eased off, and by Hawea was just mizzle. 

Nosied around Wanaka, but couldn't even find a holiday park or any ordinary shops, so we blew through the Cardrona Road to Arrowtown for the night.  Love that road,  especially the last couple of Swiss Alp style switchbacks down to the main drag.  Asked the chatty bar manager where we had dinner about the "ordinary shop" thing in these touristy towns, and it turns out my suspicions are correct.  Apart from a big red shed at Frankton, there is buggar all.  If the locals want socks, or undies, or presents for the kids or whatever, then they have to think ahead and have a list for when they visit Timaru or Dunedin or Invercargill or wherever.  What a townie I am: I wouldn't be able to cope with that any more.  Nearly time to shoot out the door for today's mission, which will be another 500-plus kilometre job.  Jean went to Milford as a kid, but I've never been there, so today's "sidetrip" is a biggie. Gotta be today, though, if we miss today's weather window we won't get a dry day up there for a while.

I'll upload this when I get a chance, TTFN.

Day Five

Quelle Horreur!  Because it was too wet yesterday to stand in  the rain with a thermos, I didn't look for it until I went to refill it with hot this morning.  Damn!  Put it by the back door ready to pick up at Hokitika, then had to gee her indoors up, forgot faithful stainless steel thermos, only about thirty years young.  Next time I'll forget the wife and take the thermos.............................

Out of Arrowtown reasonably early, fuel up at Te Anau, and watched the sunrise strike the season's first new snow on the tops as we blew out of Frankton.  I had to have a little stop for my "Curious George" genes when I came across a research station set up to study a tiny remnant of the miniature forest that first sprang up on the bare rock after the last major glaciation retreated, 18,000 years ago.  Fascinating, and amazing to consider the effort that the scientists and students must have to make to keep weeds from invading their study area, when it is now surrounded by modern farming. 

Grabbed "tenses" at a cafe at Te Anau (too early for elevenses), then off up to Milford Sound in flawless weather.  What an awesome sculptor nature is.  The immensity of the landscape makes humans seem quite insignificant.  Although the size of the effort that local mankind throws into parting tourists from their money is very far from insignificant.  There were more tour buses either going to, at, or coming back from Milford Sound than I would have thought there were in all of New Zealand, all with their little SS trained guidesshuffling their Asian or German punters from site to sight (choice! a double-sided pun).

Like every other place we've touched on this trip, not enough time: I need to walk places, and Jean can't.  I can't stand farting around shopping, Jean can't handle the constant movement.  She will have to stick it out at least another day, we have a monster sidetrip tomorrow.  I had forgotten, even though I recently watched a doco about the building of the Manapouri Project, that there is now a road to Doubtful Sound.  Got reminded when I was following a tour bus this morning, and it was plastered all over the butt-end of the bus.  After that I might have to skim round the South Coast quicker than I had planned so she can have some "girlie time" with her sister.  And maybe I can get out my hidden boots and leki sticks and go for a decent walk, instead of all these little five and ten minute dashes to grab the next couple of photos. ;-0#

Day Six

Oh Gawd!  Girlie stuff!  Jean and her sister are hard at it, catching up with stories of who has died lately in Invercargill.  I can't stand the excitement.

Road to Doubtful is 4WD only, so passed on that and headed off round the South Coast with a little side trip to  Lake Hauroko, deepest in the country so we are told.  (Actually, I already knew that, thanks to Marcus Lush's excellent TV series "South".)  And I already knew about the sandflies from previous painful acquaintance, but I didn't realise  that my travelling companion was gonna hold the car doors open so they could all leap in the car to torment us for the next hundred kms or so.  Kinda distracting keeping the Cherman Vauxhall between the drain and the centreline when your life's blood is being rapidly, and painfully, transfused from your tender tootsies into multiple greedy sandfly stomachs.  Still, they didn't only bite me, so I'm guessing that Jean will  learn from the experience.

As is so common in other rural areas, a lot of the smaller towns are disappearing back into the weeds.  We had smoko at Tuatapere, which seems pretty close to dead on its feet.  Like all the other villages on the tourist routes they are trying to plug into the visitors' wallets, but they are probably too far off the headline areas to catch the big dollars.  The conversion of so many farms to dairy is also markedly changing the appearance of Southland: when the car gets splattered from dung on the road you can tell there is a different scent from the previous sheepshit one.

Jean wanted to visit the scenes  of her misspent youth at Riverton, and we wound up at her mate's place for a cuppa for an hour or so, which let the worst of the heavy rain  move  past us before we  headed on to Invercargill.   Eventually found a cabin (well, a small house) at a holiday park outside town, but only for one night.  I'll allow two days for the sisters to catch up before they revert to type and get sororicidal (like fratricidal but female?), so we will have to "downgrade" to a standard cabin tomorrow, then we'll be off, finally, on the way to the primary objective of  this whole trip, the Catlins.

Day Seven

Jean and her little sister were hard out with girlie stuff, so I had a lazy day by myself.  Went out to Tiwai and took some photos, then over to Bluff to take photos for Jean, who has a Bluff fetish (go figure).  Anyway, she seemed happy when she saw them. 

Back to town and scoffed shark and tatie for lunch: blue cod, not something you get a lot of in the North  Island, more's the pity.  Hit the second-hand bookshop and then stood in the queue behind a bunch of Southland hillbillies at the AA.  Clearly they all had learning difficulties, because none of them seemed able to comprehend the very clear explanations the staff were giving them: and they are going to let these dropkicks drive motor vehicles?  Eventually the AA folk took pity on me, watiently paiting, and let me jump the queue, swiped my card, and let me go with my free map of the Catlins (all of Southland and Rakiura, actually, but I only wanted the Catlins bit.)

Now we are already to rumble.