Batman Encounters New Zealand

I know very little about New Zealand, apart from they have a rugby team and they produced a very funny comedy programme called The Flight of the Concords (have a look on YouTube), but I knew I was going to enjoy things when I saw the Air New Zealand safety video. It is delivered by famous surfers/models in a sort of ‘and when the plane’s about to crash (close up, big smile), then adopt the brace position, a bit like this’ sort of way, which is also very funny. I take a bus ride into the city at 6am. It is bitterly cold. I find a coffee shop that’s open. It is playing Gangsta Rap and any profits go to a Samoan women’s refuge (bit of a contradiction, I think, but maybe it is heavy with irony?). The lady behind the counter has half her head shaved, the other half has long hair. I smile a politically correct, slightly worldly, yet knowingly funky smile and check that the coffee is organic, to reinforce my blatantly obvious cool credentials. There is a meeting of smiles and eyes, in a way of communicating that only very cool people can do. I ask directions to the street where the campervan depot is, in a clever verbal demonstration that tells the world I’m very cool There is a home produced magazine on the table, with a cut out figure of a politician and also a number of cut out outfits which you can make him wear. No idea who the politician is but it includes a Darth Vader and a nurse’s outfit. Yes, I think I will like it here.

I take highway 73 west, towards Arthurs Pass, via Castle Hill. Even with the low, glowering cloud, the scenery is breath-taking and makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. The inclines are very steep, with rapidly sharp drops from the side of the road but it is still very hard to concentrate when every twist and turn reveals a new grand vista or a similar view, changed completely by subtly different light and cloud cover, with the clouds sometimes illuminated by vague sunshine and sometimes black at times, so that it is difficult to distinguish between clouds and the dark rock that they sit in front of. This is a stunningly beautiful land, forged by the heat of volcanoes and then honed and polished or brutally carved into jaggedness or scoured to a brutal flatness by the cold indifference of ice.

It is raining. It has been raining for 4 days, solidly, pretty much. When I say raining, I don’t mean light, intermittent showers. I mean solid rain. Stair rod rain. Rain that has a hard, physical presence. Rain that deafens me inside my hollow tin can of a campervan. When it is not raining and the sky is clear, the world is frozen! Yesterday night my breath had frozen on the inside of the van and I couldn't get the main sliding dor open, as it had frozen solid. It is a very frustrating, as I know I'm driving through spectacularly beautiful countryside, but there is little to see, as the clouds are so low and heavy with rain, the views are obscured. The rivers are angry and engorged with dirty grey-brown glacial water, laden with sediment, from the higher mountains. There is very little traffic, even though this is a main highway and I have seen perhaps 20 cars pass me in the opposite direction during the day. The rivers are sometimes overflowing, flecked with white foam, or meander, lost, in a river valleys that have been made far wider than their current form by their much bigger, icy forefathers. Small waterfalls rush down the side of the cliff face, sometimes splashing out over the road as I pass.I fall asleep at night thinking of rock falls, landslides, floods and skidding in the van and falling down deep ravines.
 
In defiance, I have bought a PVC poncho, with a hood. It makes me look a little like Batman. I’m changing my name by deed poll to Bruce Wayne. I have no idea where the Boy Wonder is. I think he drowned in Arthurs Pass. That’s Ok, it’s me and the Poncho against the elements and I think we will win. No, I know we will win! Sometimes things are not about intelligence. Sometimes they are about character. And the ability to believe that a PVC poncho can save the world. Which it can. Absolutely. No question at all! BIFF! ZAP!! POW!!!

Heading towards the mountains from Christchurch

Mountains opposite Castle Hill

Heading towards Arthur's Pass

My companion for a few weeks. She's called Effy.

Lake just down the road from Hokitaki. I stopped there and had my evening meal for breakfast, as it was too wet to cook the previous night. Begins with M. Can't remember the name!

Fox Glacier - unfortunately the pass to it was closed due to heavy rain

West Coast - Bruce Bay - You can travel from glacier to beach in under an hour

Just past Kumara

Campsite at Lake Paringa and the rain has stopped, for a while!

Wild Billy Falls, Haast Valley

Lake Wanaka

 

Lake Hawea