Kumara > Christchurch

It's been fun documenting the changing landscapes as we've driven from the North to the South Island and from the West coast to the East.  Its been remarkable how many differences there are in topography, plant life, etc.  I've readily taken more than 300 photos snapped from the passenger side of the car while moving at highway speed (100 kph) or slower around twisty, curvy roads.  After each ride I've culled them down to the ones that don't have light poles, signs, blurry cattle, etc to provide a small taste of what we've been seeing.  Its been fun, but this is the last leg to share...

Delaney knows I've been remarking (obsessively) about how beautiful the wild flowers are.  All along the west coast we saw lots of wild pink foxgloves.  As we crossed the mountains to the east, the pink suddenly became purple, and I don't know what these flowers actually are. Perhaps some kind of salvia?

Here are the foxgloves I've been admiring.  They were everywhere on the side of the roads.

Had to laugh at this photo that Delaney snapped.  David actually asked me to steer at one point as he took a photo that he wanted! lol! Fortunately this was on a straightaway without any traffic.  Not recommended to demo this stunt with your teenager watching you from the backseat.  Kids: do not try this at home. 

We started are day in Kumara with a low cloudy sky, but I was hopeful the clouds would lift enough that we could see just a bit of the southern alps since the glacier trip was a bust.

The clouds were pretty and slowly lifting as we climbed Arthurs pass.

Lots of hairpin turns and a number of small waterfalls.  This was actually a water chute built over the highway, apparently this was the easiest way to deal with all the water running off this slope.  Kind of cool.

View from an overlook above the water chute.

We crossed a really cool, high bridge that was next to a giant rock slide.  We didn't see too many of these major bridges, most were much more modest.  In fact most were one lane and required careful sharing / taking turns to navigate.

Our break in the middle of the drive was to hike to the falls at Arthurs Pass.  This apparently is a very popular hike because the parking lot was full and so was the trail.  Not my favorite hiking conditions, but it was good to get out to stretch our legs and enjoy the view.  

The walk started with a bridge over the river.  There were a lot of different trail heads here, ranging from 1 mile to more than 10 miles, with elevation gains of 300 ft to more than 2000 ft!  The hike to the falls was 1 mile and 300 ft gain.

The gain was ALL in stairs - 400 stairs to be exact (yes, we counted), one way!

The overlook at the falls was beautiful

The forest changed remarkably as we cleared the pass and started coming down the eastern slope.  Rather than the lush temperate rain forest, it became scrubier with some small pines.  Farther down the slope it was even more barren.  

Wide river valleys were very similar to those running off the western side of the slopes too.

You may have noticed the very grey skies in all these pics.  It turns out its not just cloudy weather, its smoke and ash from the wild fires in Australia, 1300 miles away to the west!  If you look on a satillite photo, you can see the darker grey colors where the smoke/ash is rising and being carried by the prevailing winds to the south island in NZ.

The yellow shrubs were also pretty, but I liked the pink foxgloves best.

We finally got a good view of the possums here that are such unwanted pests/predators.  (We had seen plenty as road kill, but no live ones).  They totally do not look like US possums.  They are brown, with long, lemur-like tails, and a bit cuter than our rat-like grey ones at home.  Apparently they are used for making scarves and sweaters, because I came home home with a very soft, lovely possum-merino wool scarf.

As we approached Christchurch, we passed through some really interesting hillsides with GIANT tumbled boulders in the midst of these scrub and grass covered hills.  They would have been fun to explore on a hike, but we didn't have time for a second hike on this day.

This last picture is just a few miles from Christchurch.  This is the agricultural heart of NZ.  Apparently they have a lot of problems with wind and soil erosion, so the hedge rows they've planted are huge.  We felt like we were in a giant maze with these pruned hedges on each side.  I would have liked to know how they actually trimmed them that high up.