Aotearoa

Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand meaning Land of the Long White Cloud, finally had some meaning for us on Thursday and Friday as we rode from Franz Josef to Queenstown via Haast. The long white cloud was omnipresent and obscured the tops of the mountains.

It rained all night Wednesday, often heavily. By dawn, however, it had stopped. After taking my shower, I looked out to see the tops of the mountains clear of cloud and heard the sound of helicopters buzzing in the early morning sky. I hopped on the bike and rode into town to see if I could arrange a flight. Mt. Cook was in cloud, but I could do a flight/landing on Franz Josef and twenty minutes later was in the air. The chopper could take six passengers, but there were only three of us, so we all had a window for a great view of the glacier. We hugged the waterfall laced side of the valley (seemed a little too close for comfort for a fixed-wing jet pilot!) above the glacier as we headed for our landing spot. New Zealand and Chili are the only places in the world where glaciers meet vegetation; in this case, a rain forest. Through the magic of flight, we were over the terminal of the glacier in about a minute (it had taken us 45 minutes to walk there the day before). The view of the crevasses from the air was awesome. We set down at the 7000’ level and got out to look around. The two Aussies from Western Australia (WA) had a little snow ball fight while I snapped pictures and talked with the pilot. The snow was tinged in places with a light reddish-brown color--dust from Australia! The flight was a thrill and one of the highlights of the trip--not soon forgotten.

I went back to fetch RA and we rode to Fox Glacier Township (town) and rode out to Lake Matheson where on a clear day Mounts Tasman and Cook are reflected in the calm waters of the lake. That long white cloud was in the way and the only reflection was of cloud and fog; I did get a great picture of a poster showing what we were missing! I rode to the view point for the Fox Glacier so did get to see it from a distance--the river walk to the terminal was closed due to the heavy rain from the night before.

We had a pleasant stay in Haast with a nice motel and good dinner in the Hard Antler Pub decorated with red deer antlers--reminded us of the décor in some of the places in Jackson Hole, WY, that use elk antlers for the same purpose.

On Friday, accompanied again by the long white cloud, we spent all day riding 230 km to Queenstown. We made several stops to view waterfalls and take pictures of the scenery. In Wanaka we rode out to the airport to visit the New Zealand Fighter Pilot Museum, small, but very well done. Its main purpose was to honor the NZ flyboys from WWII. Nice examples of a Tiger Moth, Hawker Hurricane, and a de Havilland Vampire fleshed out the museum visit.

The Crown Range Road to Queenstown took us up to 800+ meters (close to 300 meters higher than Haast Pass), through Cardrona and then a quick descent via seven very tight hairpin turns to our destination.

Queenstown is the adventure capital of NZ and where bungy jumping was invented. If there is an outdoor activity to be had, you can do it here. The town itself makes one think a bit of Aspen or Vail with the mountains and town crawling with tourists. Our activities consisted of taking the steam-powered TSS Earnslaw (built in 1912) across Lake Wakatipu for tea and a farm tour at the Walter Peak Farm. The old girls hits about 12 knots under a full head of steam; it is interesting to watch the stokers at work shoveling coal into the belly of the beast.

On our return to Qtown, I signed up for a jet boat trip on the Shotover River while RA declined the high speed adventure. These jet boats are built here, need less than four inches of water to operate in, hit 50 mph, and are powered by two Buick supercharged, 3.8 liter V6s producing 520 hp!!! Talk about a rush when the throttles are advanced! Fourteen passengers make a boat load, and the driver takes the boat within inches of the narrow gorge walls at high speed, usually in a major skid. Several 360s punctuate the thrilling ride--add it to your list of must-dos if you visit NZ.

Our next ride was almost straight up 450m on the Skyline Gondola for an incredible view of the town, lake, and mountains. From there we were able to watch bungy jumping, luge riding, tandem paragliding, airliners steeply climbing out from the airport, and the Earnslaw docking down below. The long white cloud finally disappeared today and the range of ski peaks called the Remarkables was clearly in view.

A short note about the many one-way bridges (we had several in OZ as well). When you approach one you see painted on the road: ONE LANE BRIDGE accompanied by a sign with two arrows on it, one large and one small. If the larger black or white arrow points in your direction of travel, you have the right of way; there will be a smaller red arrow pointed in the direction of the on-coming traffic. If the red arrow is pointed in your direction of travel, you must give way (yield); it is simple and works well.

Frequently we see large white arrows painted on the road to indicate the proper direction of travel, helpful for the many tourists here who are not native left-laners.