Road Trip: Arthur's Pass

I got up early and finished packing so as to be able to check out promptly. Once we had done that and stored our luggage, Andrew took the bus to the airport to collect the hire car and I walked into town through the damp and drizzle. I was on a definite mission – to find the library.

Having heard a vicious rumour that the library in town offered free wifi, I tracked it down and enquired at the desk. I was shocked and overjoyed to find out that the rumour was true, so set about jumping online and at last being able to surf and upload at a reasonable speed (the connection at the hostel had been slower than I have experienced in a decade!). Before I knew it, I realised that I had been there for two and a half hours – two and a half hours of bliss that is!

I packed up my computer and headed into the town for another mooch and a Starbucks, before meeting up with Andrew who had arrived with the car.

We then started our road trip (via a stop at a doorknob restoration shop where Andrew bought some black ceramic doorknobs for the house) to the Southern Alps and a little place called Arthur’s Pass. It was still pretty miserable weather-wise, with low cloud, patches of rain and even a bit of mist, here and there. Despite this, the drive was actually quite beautiful; mountains in every direction – some lush and green with plant life, others cold and grey with stone.

The drive took us along wide, winding roads, over some narrow bridges and every now and then, through a tiny one horse town; so small that you’d miss it completely if you blinked whilst going through it. As we climbed higher and higher, it was possible to feel it getting colder and colder, even in the car.

Eventually we came to Arthur’s Pass and found the YHA. It was not hard. The village of Arthur’s Pass consists of a straight road with the following in a line, totalling a distance of 250m; train station, information centre, YHA, motel, cafe/store (same place), restaurant, hotel, post office hut. There were some houses smattered amongst the trees behind this stretch of road. On speaking to the lady at the YHA desk, they’d put us in one of the cottages, set back on a road perpendicular to the main road, so we drove back the 150m and found it.

The cottage itself is an old shelter, built a long time ago (not sure when, but you can tell it’s old) as a shelter for people on ‘tramping’ holidays (in NZ ‘tramping’ means hiking apparently!). It is very quaint, with several rooms, a lounge with a log fire, kitchen and two bathrooms. Out the back is a laundry, which I expect used to be the bathroom – looking along the row of these cottages, each has the same little outhouse round the back, I just hope that no one is still using it as a bathroom because it is soooo cold!

It was late afternoon by the time we had moved our things in. We said hello to a couple of people who were sitting silently in the lounge, reading, then had a look in the Lonely Planet at what there was to do. It didn’t say much, so we decided to walk into the town and see what was there. Why we did this, I don’t know. I think we might have thought we had missed something really obvious on the way in and didn’t realise that the lack of info in the Lonely Planet was due to the fact that there really is not a lot to say!

We popped into the cafe/shop, which was deserted and did not really have a massive selection of food in the cafe area or even food in the shop area. They had a few postcards and I pointed one out to Andrew of a parrot called a Kea (I’d seen this same postcard in Christchurch) and mentioned how I would really like to see one of those birds, then as we walked out of the shop, there right in front of us on the step was a Kea! Cool! It was massive, at least twice the size of Captain, and dark green/brown with huge feet and a very sharp looking beak. It hopped about, looking hopeful – I guess it wanted food, then I noticed signs plastered all over the outside seating area of the cafe ‘Do Not Feed The Kea’ and ‘A Fed Kea is A Dead Kea’. According to the signs, there are only 5000 Keas left in the wild. Needless to say I didn’t feed it, partly because I didn’t want to break these strict ‘Don’t Feed The Kea’ rules, but also because I had nothing to feed it with even if I had wanted to. I think it twigged this after a few minutes of hopping around my feet, then flapped off onto a table and started chewing the patio umbrella.

Crossing the road, we found the post office – literally a shed like you can buy in B&Q, painted red with ‘Post Office’ written on it. Excellent! Some noise caught my attention, the Kea had followed us and had been joined by another one. Together, they flapped off and stomped about on someone’s roof – it was made of corrugated metal and their footsteps rang out! One of the Keas was peering over the edge into the window of the kitchen!

We walked a little further up the road until we decided there really was no point in continuing, so went back and headed into the place we had seen opposite the cafe/shop. It was a pub/restaurant called the Wobbly Kea. They had a huge and beautiful fireplace, so we sat at a table in front of that and warmed up! We enjoyed a dinner of pizza and read about the guy called Oscar who had built the place. It had been his house - he’d come to NZ from Germany after the war and settled there. He saw the area’s potential and had been the pioneer in building up the village as a tramping and ski resort. He worked as a ski instructor and had a shop selling state of the art (for the time) kit for tramping, ice climbing and skiing. Apparently he was ‘the man’ when it came to all that sort of stuff and even Edmund Hilary (I hope I have that name right) bought kit from him when he was on his way to whatever cold place it was that he so famously went to.

After dinner, we braved the cold once again for the walk back to the cottage, then hit the hay.