10/2/10

Another horrendous night. Had breakfast at a franchise coffee house, most expensive yet at $55. Paid Mum for breakfast $19 and $40 to Fran for hotel. Just filled car again $105, so we'll have to split that later. On the road again at 9.15 am. Saw a huge landslip yesterday as we approached Greymouth, just seen the workmen up at the top of it, working to stabilize the cliff face. Petrol actually $90, Fran had a coupon with money off. Took a picture of Mount Bruce Murray over the Taramakau River. Continued up towards Arthur's Pass. The clouds remained low and threatening. The road was cut into the side of the mountains and had chutes for scree and water to run over the top. Never seen anything like it, but of course everyone else had. Duh! Stopped at a view point to admire the red forests of rata and the white of manuka which continued above it up the mountains at 900 - 1000m. Mum and I were comparing a tree to the book when Fran started shouting. I thought he was talking about the trees but it was because there was a kea by where the car was parked at the view point. It was very tame and I crouched within a metre of it to take a photograph.We left the veiw point and went over a magnificent new bridge over a deep gorge towards the top of the pass, where we left the

state highway to climb high up to another view point above the road. we took pictures of the bridge we had just been over. The scale of the engineering project was immense. The small vehicle in the photo is a lorry with a double length trailer. We also checked out the flora at this height, and as we were leaning over the guard rail a kea came and joined us, parading up and down the rail beside us, like it was showing off. Above us on the car park were three more and they took off calling back to our companion. You could hear the distinctive call and see the red feathers on the underside of the wings.

We were practically at the top here and soon started dropping back down towards the hamlet of Arthur's Pass where a railway emerged from a tunnel and ran parallel to the road for about 20kms until it branched away towards Cass and Lake Sarah. We could just see Lake Sarah off to our left, soon followed by Lake Grasmere closer to the road and then Lake Pearson. It was after 11.30 am by now and we agreed on a coffee break. We stopped at the motel cum restaurant at Flock Hill, called appropriately enough  Flock Hill Motel and we'd had a good cup of coffee, we came out to sight of a huge flock of lambs in a pen 

next to the motel. We went and hung over the gate and gaped at them for a few minutes, then it was back in the car to rejoin the road. We then travelled through some of the most bizarre landscape I have ever seen. Very soft rolling hills showing massive scars of recent landslips, very flat valleys, terraced with wide flat terraces and valleys that looked like rifts, with very steep sides and flat bottoms like a 'u', then more gentle smooth hills with limestone boulders and ridges poking out of the turf. Really odd. We left this surreal landscape to drop down through native moorland and thence into low cloud and misty rain where the visibility became a couple of hundred yards, which lasted all the way to Christchurch.