Back to the West Coast

The West Coast of New Zealand is fabulous. There is mile after mile of fantastic scenery – beaches, mountains, forests, and everything in between. It’s also on the other side of the Southern Alps from Christchurch so any journey between the two must needs go through one of the passes.

From Christchurch, you take the Arthur’s Pass road (SH73) which winds its way across the Canterbury Plain and then up into the mountains proper. Although it’s spectacular, the requirement to look at the road, rather than the scenery, is the only downside of driving yourself here.

En route, I stopped at Castle Hill, an outcropping of Limestone that has been eroded over time into some quite bizarre shapes.

If you’re a fan of the Narnia films, you might recognise this:

As the location for Aslan's camp in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

A little further on, you come to the Broken River – a small, fast-flowing river that has cut its way down into the limestone. With my mind in a Narnian frame, it reminded me of the River Rush as it appears in Prince Caspian. It used to be joined by a tributary flowing through this valley:

But, over time, the slightly-acidic water ate away at cracks in the limestone and eventually the entire stream ended up under ground.

It reappears some 500m further down the river:

Or, closer up:

Before the river continues on its way:

It’s possible to walk through the cave. Well, I say “walk”, but “wade” would be a better description. Unfortunately, the water level was a little too high for me to tackle this, especially on my own, but I think it would be an amazing thing to do some other time. Of course, the only way to know that the water was going to be too high was to get in and find out. I can confirm that it was cold...

Anyway, the West Coast wasn’t getting any closer and I was getting more and more tired so I took advantage of having my own kitchen and bedroom and had a cup of tea and a nap before pushing on, eventually overnighting at the DOC camp at Lake Ianthi.

Finally, after picking up the van, I visited a supermarket to lay in some stocks for the coming week. New Zealanders are known for their direct modes of speech - when they see a spade, they will quite happily call it a bl**dy spade. However, their ideas of marketing are really quite different to ours. I doubt you'd see quite such a candid description of the merchandise in any British supermarket as:

Being Scottish, of course I took advantage of the offer. It seems reasonably tasty to me.