Northward bound
Our deadline to leave New Zealand was looming, so we piled back into our campervan and drove north west to the coastal road.
This involved crossing the divide in the Southern Alps which marks the watershed. We had been told we couldn't take our campervan on the most direct route because of the risk of burning out our breaks on the descent, so we drove the long way round, which was also very scenic.
At dusk we pulled into a campsite in a national park just in time to watch the sun set on the peaks around us.
The next morning we reached the coast and filled up with diesel before turning north. We followed this road for miles between sightings of other humans. To our right, rose rain-forest covered hills or marshy wetlands and our constant companion on our left was the beautifully calm Tasman Sea, fringed by pebbly beaches strewn with driftwood.
Every time the road crossed a river or creek it would narrow to one lane for the bridge, with one direction having priority. The longer bridges had little lay-bys where you could pull in to let oncoming traffic squeeze pass.
We reached the famous Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers in the late afternoon and had just enough time to walk over to the Fox glacier for a look. The next day, Katie and Susanne went for a glacier climb while I caught up on the last few blog entries and started researching some of our Australian travel plans (having had my share of glaciers in Argentina and Alaska).
We pushed on up the coast and then turned inland to cross back over the mountains at Arthur's Pass. The campervan was in first gear in a number of places and the windy road was quite narrow too.
We ended up doing the last bit in the dark, and every time a big truck swung round a corner towards us there was a tense moment as we all tried to calculate just how far to the left we could squeeze our campervan and just how much space was left between us and the truck.
Soon after the pass we found a place to park for the night, and in the morning we finished the journey back to Christchurch (after a little delay helping a poor woman who's campervan battery had gone flat in the night and couldn't start her engine).
This involved crossing the divide in the Southern Alps which marks the watershed. We had been told we couldn't take our campervan on the most direct route because of the risk of burning out our breaks on the descent, so we drove the long way round, which was also very scenic.
At dusk we pulled into a campsite in a national park just in time to watch the sun set on the peaks around us.
The next morning we reached the coast and filled up with diesel before turning north. We followed this road for miles between sightings of other humans. To our right, rose rain-forest covered hills or marshy wetlands and our constant companion on our left was the beautifully calm Tasman Sea, fringed by pebbly beaches strewn with driftwood.
Every time the road crossed a river or creek it would narrow to one lane for the bridge, with one direction having priority. The longer bridges had little lay-bys where you could pull in to let oncoming traffic squeeze pass.
We reached the famous Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers in the late afternoon and had just enough time to walk over to the Fox glacier for a look. The next day, Katie and Susanne went for a glacier climb while I caught up on the last few blog entries and started researching some of our Australian travel plans (having had my share of glaciers in Argentina and Alaska).
We pushed on up the coast and then turned inland to cross back over the mountains at Arthur's Pass. The campervan was in first gear in a number of places and the windy road was quite narrow too.
We ended up doing the last bit in the dark, and every time a big truck swung round a corner towards us there was a tense moment as we all tried to calculate just how far to the left we could squeeze our campervan and just how much space was left between us and the truck.
Soon after the pass we found a place to park for the night, and in the morning we finished the journey back to Christchurch (after a little delay helping a poor woman who's campervan battery had gone flat in the night and couldn't start her engine).
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