Trip From Queenstown to Nelson

A popular spot to retire in New Zealand is Nelson, on the northwest corner of the South Island. Since we have a rental car we decided to take in some scenery and drive from Queenstown to Nelson taking the coastal highway. There were all sorts of warnings online about how difficult the trip was and it is an estimated eleven hour drive so we decided to break it up into two days. I assumed most of it would be like the California coastal road, twisting through the mountains

To get to the coast we had to backtrack some so we again wound through the mountains to Wanaka and headed south until we could finally turn west and find the coast. It was a typical drive through the New Zealand alps over narrow roads without breakdown lanes and with scant railings. It was a beautiful trip for me, however, since I didn't have to keep my eyes on the road every second.

Once we were on the west side of the mountains we were in rain forest. The road cut through solid mountain rock that was covered by ferns that had colonized the moss that grew where water trickled down from the peaks above. The new growth on the ferns is bright orange, the color of a Baltimore oriole in the spring. The ferns spread by rhizome so once they got a start in the moss they crawled all over the rock walls next to the road. Above them on the mountain itself grow cordyline shrubs. These are the same plants that we buy as annual “spikes” for planters but here they grow 20 feet tall or more in the wild. They call them cabbage trees here – they lose their lower leaves and form the same woody stems as the houseplant. With them are also a variety of false aralias (Dizygotheca) that form leggy shrubs that northern gardeners would recognize as house plants and huge native tree ferns.

They shade the small ferns growing on the rock and form the understory between them and the tall manuka trees that are in full flower this far south. There are multiple-dozens of bee hives working in any flat area we pass, sited so they can work on the manuka flowers. We had to stop next to a “bee yard” to wait our turn on one of the dozens of one-way bridges on the trip and the air around the hives was thick with thousands of worker bees bringing manuka pollen and nectar to the hive while hundreds more took off to join in the harvest.

It was during our alpine journey to the western highway that we passed our first “runaway ramp.” There were notices about this safety feature of the highway about a mile from the actual spot. This is an emergency measure for vehicles that lose their brakes on the steep, winding road. Ha-ha-ha! Tom will confirm that unless Indiana Jones is piloting your vehicle you are going to immediately go over the cliff if you are without brakes. There's absolutely not a snowball's chance that you are not going off the road and directly into the gorge within feet of losing slowing power. The actual ramp when we passed it was a steep lane cut directly into he cliff. Even if you managed to run your vehicle up it there's no way it isn't going to roll right back down and, again, roll off into the gorge below unless your emergency brake is in A-1 condition which is wouldn't be if you've been using it to get you as far as the runaway ramp. The runaway ramp and signs are more of a laugh for drivers who are fighting to stay on the road with their brakes in good repair than a functional safety measure.

The southern highways are very compact – there's not more than a foot between the cliff face and the road in many places and sometimes not much more than that on the outside of the pavement between the outside lane and the drop off the mountain sides. These days there are some safety rails on the edge of the road, however, which there weren't when I first visited NZ in the late '70s. Traffic pushes the speed limit so flying around the tight turns can be exciting. That's especially true when bicycle traffic is on the road - and there's a lot of it in the mountains. Not even in my wildest fantasies would I ever dream I could do this kind of cycling but there are a whole lot of people who can. Some of the hairpin roads have a 45 degree slope and even laden with multiple panniers full of luggage or pulling small trailers the cyclists make good speed up and down the more-than-mile-high mountains. I only saw a few with red faces from their exertions. It's not like they're only pedaling up a single peak either – once you're in the mountains you have to keep going until you get somewhere you can leave the road. That's a feat for the cyclists and terrifying for the car drivers. The law here says a driver must give the cyclist a yard of passing clearance but some of these roads simply don't have that kind of extra room. So we wait until there's room to pass or a slow vehicle lane for the cyclist to use and hope an impatient driver behind us doesn't pull out and cause a wreck. Going south from Queenstown to look for the Northern Lights we saw the police pull over a line of cars the officers felt were passing dangerously. Fortunately we hadn't felt the need to hurry so we continued on our drive unmolested.

Much of our coastal drive is on plains next to the Tasman Sea, a big surprise to me because I didn't realize there was so much flat land between the mountains and sea. This seems like a dangerous place for a road since any kind of tsunami would roll back for miles on the flat terrain but there are resorts, ranches and towns thriving here. The native Maori recall several tsunamis in the area in historic times but surprisingly not in the last century or so. With modern warning systems, tsunamis in New Zealand haven't been a major problem so people gravitate to the seashore. Lots of the drive is actually on straight, flat roads which gave Tom a chance to see the Franz Josef and other glaciers and Mt. Cook. We passed huge numbers of sheep and cattle on the coastal plains as well as herds of wapiti, red deer and alpaca.

New Zealand, especially the South Island, is loaded with invasive species of both plants and animals. Several have almost destroyed the native birds which are all ground nesters (there are reserves established for them on coastal islands to keep a portion of the survivors safe). The worst offenders are red deer, Australian possums and stoats.

The only native New Zealand mammals are bats and fur seals so deer were released by European settlers to provide food. They reproduced so well they nibbled the native plants down to nubs. Then possums (which ironically are now endangered in their native Australia) were imported into NZ begin a fur industry. These are hairy possums very different from the ones in Wisconsin. They escaped from captivity, reproduced like rabbits (another problem animal) and started snacking on the native bird nestlings and their eggs. Some idiot then imported stoats (ferrets) to get rid of the possums but they also found the birds tastier.

By the 1970s the southmost part of the South Island was deforested by the deer and possums and stoats were everywhere. The native birds were all endangered. As part of a restoration effort the wild deer were all hunted with the last ones going down to helicopter hunters in the '80s. Right now they're fighting the possums with poisoned bait which is very controversial but apparently working. We saw very few of them squashed on the road and in the past they've been the most common kind of road-kill. What they can do to eradicate the ferrets is harder to imagine. Maybe they'll try to engineer a virus – the Australians bio-engineered a virus several years ago to kill the rabbits in Tasmania.

We spent our lay-over night at a little motel in Hokitika in a suite with a complete kitchen and private patio. Unfortunately windows in both New Zealand and Australia lack screens. To get ventilation you have to let in the mosquitoes and moths. The moths (several of which are native) are easy to escort out but the mosquitoes are like their brethren everywhere - eager to bite tasty tourists. We've opted to sleep in stuffy rooms a couple of nights rather than provide sustenance to make another generation of mosquitoes. Now on to Nelson.