Driving the NZ
OK! Here goes! It's 8:11am and I'm sitting here with a large mug of caffeine-infused-goodness, so if I'm not quite awake, and I try to be witty, you'll have to forgive me. Carly and I talked lots about how to organize all of this junk into blog postings, and we figured we'll mostly try to do the blog postings by location (city / town / whatever). Some of the photos don't really fit into that category, however, for example, driving in the middle of nowhere, etc.
So here is a post about driving in New Zealand. Based on our astute observations, we would like to nominate New Zealand as "Roadkill capital of the World". At some points, we would pass a splattered and mauled possum every few hundred meters. In addition, we'd like to dub New Zealand the home of the "Stupidest Birds in the World". I forget the name of the species, but there are these birds in New Zealand that just sit on the highways and try to dodge cars at the last second. Except, sometimes they aren't quite fast enough. We managed to obliterate 2 of these birds (one off the front grill, and one off the windshield) and narrowly missed about 200 others.
They drive on the "wrong" (read: Left) side of the road in New Zealand, and getting used to that (and especially to the traffic circles / roundabouts) took some getting used to (especially the 2-lane ones). Most of the highways between cities were only 2 lanes, and you can almost always pass the slow people in front of you using the oncoming traffic lane. Driving tended to be really enjoyable, and the scenery while driving tended to be absolutely stunning almost all the time.
In my opinion - the absolute best drives were:
From Rotorua to Auckland - through Matamata via state highway 27 / 24
From Picton to Westport - along state highway 63
From Charleston to Greymouth - along state highway 6
From Te Anau to Milford Sound (absolutely stunning)
From Wanaka to Queenstown (via Cardrona Valley)
From Dunedin to Oamaru (via the Coast Road)
Ok - not that you probably know or care about that detail - but here are some photos of our "driving" times, and I'll try to remember as best I can where we took them.
Driving from Picton to Westport
The scenery driving from Picton to Westport was ever-changing, and always stunning. Mountains, forests, rivers, fields, combinations of the above. And sheep, plenty of cutesy little sheep.
Next we have a picture that was shot somewhere around Punakaiki which is along the West Coast of the South Island, famous for the "Pancake Rocks". We have some really fabulous shots of the open ocean (Tasman Sea) along this drive, but we can't put them all up.
Now, another interesting thing in New Zealand while driving is the abundance of one-lane-bridges. We don't really have those in Canada (or in Singapore, for that matter) and I can say that these are one of the worst inventions EVAR. Coming up to the one lane bridge (which, I might add, is sometimes so long or windy, you can't even see the other side) - you basically stop (one side has to stop - the other has a right of way - indicated by signage) - and if you don't see anyone - go right ahead and use that bridge. And hope that there isn't some moron flying towards you from around the corner at 120KM/hour. 
Every now and again, if the one-lane-bridge wasn't enough - you would see something like the following:
Now, if you can't make it out, this is a one lane bridge we were driving across, with the added bonus of a set of train-tracks. So what are you supposed to do when a train is coming? For a while I thought it was maybe just some sorta sick joke they were playing on the tourists, but these train-tracks are legit!
Another really awesome part of the drive was when we were heading from Wanaka to Queenstown, and we took a less-documented highway through the Cardrona valley. This was a super awesome drive as you're basically winding through these desert-like mountains at the bottom of a valley, and then as you get closer to Queenstown, you climb to the top of the mountain range, and are rewarded with breathtaking scenery, and probably a bunch of hang-gliders and other such adventurous folk flying around above you. This is one shot we took from the top of the mountains overlooking Queenstown, which is the circle-shaped town down in the valley there.
As we were leaving Queenstown heading toward Milford Sound, Carly managed to grab a shot of The Remarkables (AKA Mordor) out the Window:
Later on in our drive to Milford, after we passed through Te Anau, we got a few other good shots. I thought this part of the drive was totally awesome. To see the huge plains leading up to these massive mountains was super cool.
Alrighty. Well, I think that will be the end of this little section on our drive around New Zealand. The drive back across the South Island from Te Anau to Dunedin (which is on the East Coast of the South Island) was not as spectacular as some of the other drives. They have a much longer scenic route that you can take, which goes along the Southern Coast, but unfortuntately, we just didn't have the time to be able to take that longer way around.
I have to say that a lot of what we saw in New Zealand reminded us of parts of Canada, but also that a lot of the scenes we saw in New Zealand simply can't be captured in a photograph. The lush green is too green to be captured in a picture, and too big. The mountains are the same, and same with the waterfalls. Hopefully you enjoy the photos, at any rate, and there are more to come!
