travellingbennetts

After two nights in Te Anau, we backed up our tourism frenzy with two nights in Queenstown. As ex-west coasters in Tasmania, the differences between Queenstown and Queenstown could not be more absolute to us; one a famous mining town that rose and slowly fell, the other a famous mining town that rose and now has an international airport and a Louis Vuitton.

The tourism included a bit of jet boating which is actually very good, and a sight-seeing/winery tour that took in the famous Skippers Road, some Lord of the Rings scenery, Arrowtown, a couple of wineries on the road out toward Cromwell, and a bit of panning for gold on the Arrow River. If we’d been seeking iron ore rather than gold the panning would have been a resounding success, but a couple of decent wines made up for mining failure. A special and delicious dinner at the Botswana Butchery in Queenstown rounded off the tourist capital of the southern hemisphere experience, although the dozen oysters wasn’t taken up as at least 4 pearls would be required to make the NZ$82 worthwhile.

Day 8 we were back on the road heading to the west coast. Firstly, we had some fun motorcycling to do up the Crown Range Road switchbacks, before reaching the highest sealed pass at 1076m in the Crown Saddle for a quick pinkie flexing. We slipped off the other side into the narrow gullies where the temperature dropped to a challenging 2°C and brutally reminded us of the frozen pinkie traumas on the Milford Sound road. A chance to thaw with a coffee was taken at Cardrona, however we had a big day ahead of us so pushed on before full thaw was achieved. Through Wanaka, the only town in New Zealand starting with Wa and not Wai, then nek minnit (go on, Google it) we’d ridden through The Neck between Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka on the way up to Haast Pass.

The day was warming up a little bit, but a stop to really warm up with a short hike was taken at the Blue Pools on the Makarora River. The pools are so clear that the depth is impossible to judge, until a girl decided that she’d jump in to the damn-near freezing water from the bridge and show us it was actually quite deep.

After that visual trauma, we rolled over the Pass and down onto the Haast River, noting the white bait fishing was underway with nets positioned on the banks of the river and streams, and a white bait festival was happening in Haast, making it the non-negotiable stopping point for luncheon. After some mucking about trying to find the festival in a town with a population of about 3 people, we hit the jackpot at the Frontier Café and tucked into a few cracking white bait fritters with chips. After the fuelling with white bait, we did likewise with the bikes as the availability of fuel and whitebait further north was uncertain.

While we’re discussing fuel, New Zealand has brutal pricing which was a real shock to the system whenever we pulled in to a servo. Our first fuelling was in Lake Tekapo on Day 1, and the $2.60 per litre translated into about $66, certainly a long way north of anything we’d ever paid since the US$1.36 per litre in Zimbabwe in 2017. Cindy had managed to get a Mobil card which gave us 6 cents a litre off and it is lucky New Zealand South Island distances are quite small, however the locals were het up about it and it was always a topic of conversation led by the stunningly handsome host Duncan on breakfast television.

We pushed up the west coast, which was a mix of small farm areas and mountain spurs pushing into the Tasman Sea, the latter creating more motorcycling fun than the former. We had a wander down the beach at Bruce Bay, just so we could touch the water which had the recognisable taste of Australian saltiness. Vowing never to drink salt water to cure homesickness again, we continued slightly more inland through Fox Glacier, before the rain started while traversing the spurs running down from the Mt Cook – Minarets range that separates the famous glacial valleys. Some concentration on riding was required due to the very winding and wet roads, so with some relief we reached the Wai-something River bridge and rolled into Franz Josef Glacier, which fortunately turned out to be a town with accommodation and amenities rather than literally a glacier.

Strangely for a place which has 582 rain days per year, the Rainforest Retreat had neither undercover parking nor any form of patio outside the room, so dripping bodies carting wet gear were forced to march straight into the small deluxe bedroom. The bathroom was double the size of the bedroom, and for reasons probably unknown to the builder, the developer, or the architects, the bedroom TV audio was piped in and volume could be controlled from a remote on the wall in the shower. Not the picture though, why this was done remained a total mystery until the following morning when the dulcet tones of breakfast TV Duncan made our toilette soothing as he went off about fuel prices.

Day 9 was the biggie. Officially 488km, the route would take us almost back to our starting point of Christchurch. We made it worse by starting with a back-track to get to the Franz Josef glacier lookout point, which put the day over 500km. Finally heading the right direction, we rolled up the coast famous for gold mining which became slightly more agricultural as the river valleys between spurs opened up. We decided our brief walk at Franz Josef deserved a coffee at a likely looking place in Harihari, mainly because the village deserved our custom for having a name that was easy to remember and didn’t start with Wai. A nice little shop was located that would once have been called a Milk Bar in Australia, but is called a Dairy in New Zealand, which had the added service of buying possum fur. Duncan the breakfast TV host’s biggest complaint after fuel is Australian possums which destroy native vegetation. Originally brought out in the 1850’s for fur but quickly running amok due to no predators like pythons, it is fabulous that the possum fur industry is finally taking off.

Almost within sight of Greymouth, which at that point we weren’t sure was pronounced Grey Mouth or Grumath, the right turn was taken to Arthur’s Pass. The road initially follows the Wai-something river, before scooting up the Otira River. There was a bit of an engineering challenge before reaching Arthur’s Pass; a failing mountain spur has created a huge scree slope, while the other side looks even less stable so the only way around it appeared to be by going straight up the river on a viaduct, imaginatively named the Otira Viaduct. It was well worth a stop for photos because we’d forgotten what having warm fingers was like by then.

Once over Arthur’s Pass, the drop down into the very wide Waimakariri River is quite sudden, and the ring of mountains and the increase in warmth inspired a lunch stop at the railway bridge over the river, which required some off-road riding skills to be dredged up from past memory files while getting down a steep gravelly road. Old concrete blocks on the bank of the river made the perfect location for the best scenic lunch of the trip, if we’d had white bait fritters then we’d still be there.

Then came a fabulous bit of riding down through the dry western side of the mountains and down onto the plains, with fast sweeping bends down through some rock formations and remnant mountains into Springfield. We decided that a coffee was required at a café with motorcycles parked outside, as our destination of Hanmer Springs was still a fair way off so a recharge was necessary. Things were going well as we suddenly found ourselves back on roads previously travelled on day 1, until we hit Oxford, when the GPS seemed to get a waypoint for its home at South Pacific Motorcycle Tours mixed into the route. Fortunately, Cindy’s GPS knew better so the gravel roads heading into wilderness were avoided, and eventually we popped out onto Highway 1 at Amberley.

The end was almost in sight now, and with a few more towns starting with Wai behind us, we pulled into Hanmer Springs at about 5pm, disgorging ourselves and luggage into Cheltenham House, a very fine B&B right in the action and only a short walk from the springs. We decided on a private room at the springs, and even though this wasn’t fair dinkum hot sulphurous waters, the aching muscles from 500km of riding in some spectacular country deserved the best. A few complimentary wines with our hosts and other guests, and an excellent dinner at Monteith’s Brewery Bar got us through the evening.

Day 10 was a much-anticipated ride to the west coast of New Zealand, where we hadn’t been for almost a whole day. The reason for the insane navigation was to ride both Arthur’s Pass and Lewis Pass, although the mountains are a lot flatter in the north, so Lewis Pass wasn’t quite so cold that chilblains were a major risk. Eventually bursting forth from mountainous country, we found ourselves in the mining town of Reefton, notable as the first town in NZ to have electric light. I was going to say in 2006 but decided breakfast TV’s Duncan might be offended so decided against it. After a lunch next to what must be the world’s largest skate park, indicating that youth and concrete suppliers have little to do in Reefton, we kicked onto toward the coast. A brief stop was made at the coal mining town of Blackball to check that we hadn’t been blackballed from the west coast club, and we rolled into Greymouth (by now realising that it is pronounced grey mouth) to check it out rather than head nine miles north to the B&B at Nine Mile. Everyone had dissed Greymouth as having nothing to offer, but the history of the proud gold, coal, and timber town presented on the flood wall along the river is very well done. Having flooded over twenty times since the town was founded, two floods in 1988 prompted building the wall which hasn’t gone under since.

With coffee and petrol ingested, we did the nine miles to the B&B which has fabulous views of the Tasman Sea from the rooms. We decided on a wander down to the beach and came across a seal which wasn’t very keen on us and bolted when we got close. We tried not to disturb it, and in so doing a big wave got me from the knees down and so the traditional drying of gear continued, but this time of the evening wear rather than the bike wear. A great ploughman’s platter accompanied by a sunset, and our welcome back to the west coast was complete.

Superb B&B breakfast dispensed with, Day 11 was looking a bit iffy in regard to weather, but a GPS tour stops for no rider so we hit the road heading north once more. Through the edgy sounding Barrytown, we stopped to check out the amazing pancake rocks at Punakaiki, and then stopped for a lengthy coffee at a van on the side of the Fox River. After throwing the ball for the van owner’s dog Peanut about 100,000 times, we kept going on for the next mini-break at Mitchell’s Gully Gold Mine. The gold mine is owned by the self-proclaimed world’s laziest miner, whose great-grandfather started it in the layers of ancient sands that were deposited from the ocean currents that sweep up from south of Greymouth. The gold is very fine and grades aren’t fabulous, but the Mitchell in charge makes a living creating bespoke wedding rings, for which he just goes out and produces enough gold from the mine as is required. Next stop after a wonderful unsupervised poke around in tunnels in the compacted sand cliffs and a look at the old crushing batteries and mercury amalgam tables was a detour to Cape Foulwind to see a seal colony, although we weren’t sure whether the five or so seals present officially makes it a colony.

It was heading on to lunch time, so we decided to take a detour into the town of Westport, famous as the only town in the South Island with a name starting with W that has a following vowel that isn’t an A. We found a likely lunch place after a bit of cruising of the main street, and were excited to find that whitebait sandwiches were on the specials menu. The whitebait fritters were spectacular and combined with some of the freshest white bread possible, this lunch will live on in our memories for a very long time, it was really that good.

Having driven around Westport 12 times and using $10 of fuel looking for a Mobil to get our 6₵ per litre discount, we recognised that the Mobil was a GPS imaginary destination so gave up and filled up at a non-discounting servo before heading east on the Buller Gorge Road. This is a great motorcycling road that follows the Buller River to Murchison, and we were enjoying the winding track and riding under the Hawk’s Crag overhang when we decided a refreshment stop was required at the Buller Gorge Swing Bridge. The swing bridge had a fee to cross which seemed a bit rich, but the bloke in the office was so convincing that we decided we’d better do it. A look at the bridge and we realised our money wasn’t wasted, it looked really long and really flimsy. At 110m it is really long, and out in the middle the thing is bouncing and wobbling like an ADHD 3-year-old on double-shot Robusta espressos.

Having completed our fourth walk for the day, we’d had enough of that and as we were on a motorcycling holiday we needed to re-focus and just ride. It was a fair old slog heading into Nelson which seemed to be the size of New York, coming from the south-west requires first passing through the towns of Richmond and Stoke which are basically attached. The B&B was right on the edge of town, which turned out to be only 4 blocks big. Nelson was our final two-night stay, which meant we could enjoy our winery/brewery tour the next day in an unconstrained fashion. Nelson wines aren’t as popular or well known as the Marlborough wines, but after a couple of dozen wine tastings and six different beers at lunch no-one was able to make any fine distinctions on nose or palate, nor cared.

Day 12 weather had moved beyond iffy and patchy into relentless. It was raining heavily when we got up and it rained heavily almost all day. Thank heaven for the BMW GS Dry suits which did a good job so long as zips were remembered to be zipped, but my water-proof boots were discovered early to have transformed into water-capturing and water-retaining boots at some point since early in the year. By Havelock, the allegedly fabulous motorcycling road of Queen Charlotte Drive around the water to Picton was very unattractive to all cold and sodden motorcyclists, so they took the shortcut straight to Blenheim. Fortunately, a downtown car park provided enough room under cover while also offering a certain uncaring attitude toward pant-and-sock-free display from passers-by who seemed more concerned with finding a park. A nearby restaurant was entered, and for the second day running a magnificent, although not quite as stunning as Westport, white bait fritter sandwich was hoovered up. With a change of smalls and the garments refreshed, we pushed on with improving weather down a nice road which runs alongside the South Pacific Ocean, all the way to our final tour stop in Kaikoura.

Kaikoura was having a mini-boom due to the road works crews staying in the town to repair the massive damage to the highway and railway caused by the November 2016 earthquake. Every restaurant and bar was packed with road workers which added an odd aura into the atmosphere of what would likely be a hipster-friendly eco-touristy town under normal circumstances.

Day 13 was the final day of riding with the plan simply to get back to SPMT. Having dried our gear to the point where moisture was only just discernible in most items worn against the skin, we were dismayed to see the weather appeared to be just like early Day 12. With little choice but to enjoy a breakfast with our hostess who was a serious touring rider and harden up and get on with it, the stuff was loaded on for the last time, the plastic shopping bags were wrapped around the feet before sliding them into the boots, and we headed off in the rain.

After a seriously tough slog, we made it to the Paddock Café in Cheviot which had a roaring fire and whose management team didn’t seem to care about our dripping. Once relatively dry and refreshed with a lamb and rosemary sausage roll, loins and everything else were girded and we forced ourselves back out into the freezing rain. This section took us from Cheviot to Amberley, and we later agreed was some of the hardest riding we’d ever done, even worse than the horrible sandy road heading into Aus in the heat in Namibia. Fortunately, Amberley had a service station with a roaring fire and even a jigsaw puzzle set up on a table which took our minds off the wet. Having completed a fair amount of the puzzle to procrastinate, we re-installed wet gear and mounted up for the final leg back to SPMT.

The welcome from the SPMT team lifted the spirits tremendously, especially the hot cup of tea and the chance to get into some dry clothes. We gave a de-brief, but apart from some whinging about NZ fuel prices and weather which SPMT probably can’t do too much about, we could not fault the professionalism of the crew regarding the motorcycles or the accommodation or the GPS set-up and the list of attractions. Easy to give SPMT a very high recommendation. After Mike had given us a lift into town, the evening was spent drying absolutely everything and having a last go at some excellent craft IPA’s and yet another excellent dinner, before stuffing everything back into bags for the short flight home to the warm and dry familiarity of SE QLD.

 The end of NZ. Until next time.