Motueka Valley to Arthur's Pass

Monday, 15 February 2010     Lake Hawea Station near Wanaka, New Zealand

I'm writing this in a great little cottage on the southern shore of Lake Hawea, after almost two weeks of action-packed adventure.  More about Lake Hawea Station in a future post.  For now, let me take you back to the day we left the Kahurangi Brown Trout B&B in the Motueka valley up in the northwestern corner of the South Island.

Wed 3 Feb: Motueka Valley (Kahurangi Brown Trout B&B) - Westport (Bella Vista Motel)

We drove first back to the east a bit to revisit Nelson Lakes National Park.  On the western shore of Lake Rotoiti we hiked "Paddy's Track" up the mountain overlooking the lake.  Here is Paula on the track:

Beautiful views like this were typical along the track:

Note the tree in full bloom in the foreground:

There are two similar species of trees commonly known as the "tea tree", both in the myrtle family Myrtaceae but in different genus - the manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) and the kanuka (Kunzea ericoides).  They both have striking white flowers that honeybees love.  Manuka honey evidently has documented antibiotic effects and is sold widely throughout New Zealand, usually marked with some numerical grade indicating the concentration of active ingredient.  The manuka flowers are somewhat larger than kanuka and occur singly, whereas the kanuka flowers occur in bunches and are smaller.  That's a pretty subtle distinction for Tyler to discern, but Paula, plant taxonomist that she is, assures me that it is meaningful.

Thur 4 Feb: Westport - Arthur's Pass (Alpine Motel)

Wednesday night we stayed in the coast town of Westport.  Thursday morning, before continuing on the coast road southward, we took a local road due west out of Westport to explore Cape Foulwind.  You can imagine why it was so-named by eighteenth-century sailors.  Here is the lighthouse:

I would show you the heavy house but I couldn't find it.  This view is fairly typical of a lot of coves and beaches along the upper west coast, with the jumble of big rocks just offshore.

This is from the path to the lighthouse looking east toward Westport.  The smokestacks in the distance are part of major cement factory, taking advantage of the limestone available to quarry nearby, as well as the ocean shipping port.

Some more views from this vicinity:

On down the coast road about 60 km from Westport we found Punakaiki, the Pancake Rocks and Blowhole.

Look at the rocks on the left, not at the pretty woman:

We had been seeing this type of rock formation earlier as we stopped at scenic overlooks, but this place is really spectacular.  The "blowhole" referred to in its name is a natural phenomenon in which large waves are directed into a narrow channel:

through which they enter a surge basin.  Note the free-standing arch over the entrance.

In the basin walls there are tunnels and caves which each wave surge can enter and blow out the other end with a sometimes spectacular spray and "whoosh".

Fri - Sat, 5-6 Feb: Arthur's Pass

Arthur's Pass, 920 m altitude, is the best of four principal passes over the Southern Alps.  If you lived on the east coast in the region of Canterbury (Christchurch) and wanted to get to the west, this is your best option.  The highway up from the west has several noteworthy features.  Here is a rockfall shelter designed to keep water and (duh!) falling rocks off the highway.

This viaduct replaced a tortuous mountain road segment that was constantly being eaten by landslides down the scoria slope above.  Note the large double-trailer tank truck leading a parade of frustrated motorists in the third photo.  This whole route up through the Otiro Gorge is serious driving!

The slopes of this whole mountain region are covered with southern rata trees blazing red in full bloom.

We were amazed to see several of the rare kea, the only alpine parrot in the world.  Look up the kea on Google.  They are amazing birds - sociable, highly intelligent, able to solve puzzles that no other bird can come close to, inquisitive, and (from an anthropomorphic viewpoint) mischievous and destructive.  They are sort of like a very smart hyperactive adolescent male human (a subject about which Tyler and Paula know a lot).  This one was in a scenic viewpoint turnout trying to pry the rivets out of the metal railing.

Here are two strange birds observing each other:

Here's another kea (banded) that we observed at another stop.

During our three days in Arthur's Pass we must have seen ten or more kea.  We were told that the total known population is only about 2500 birds, so we probably saw 0.4% (check my math) of the world's supply of kea.  They were prolific in these mountains 150 years ago, but they had an annoying habit that caused the sheep ranchers to hunt them almost to extinction:  they supposedly would land on the back of a sheep and use their strong, sharp beak to dig right through all the wool and muscle and get at the kidneys, which are surrounded by rich layers of fat.  Of course, it may be that they didn't actually attack live healthy sheep, but only took advantage of sheep already dead from other causes.  Anyway, it didn't take many instances of shepherds finding dead sheep with gaping wounds in their lower back before the ranchers got the government to put a bounty on the kea.  Lesson to wild animals: it isn't a good idea to get ranchers mad at you.  How many times have other animals learned that lesson the hard way on the other side of the world?

Another "pest" throughout New Zealand is the introduced Australian possum.   Its fur is valued and blends well with Marino sheep wool to make exquisite woven goods - scarves, socks, hats, sweaters - which are sold in every tourist town in the country.  But they are very destructive out in the bush, both to the indigenous trees and to the remaining birds.  They specialize in eating the tender new growth at the tops of trees and the ends of branches, effectively curtailing development.  They also eat bird's eggs, which is especially destructive of the remaining indigenous flightless birds.  Because they grew up living on an island totally devoid of predators, the birds lost the ability to fly and they build their nests on the ground.  Of course, this makes them and their eggs easy prey to all kinds of introduced mammals: dogs, feral cats, stoats, weasels, and rats.  But this possum is prolific and widespread.  They say there are 70 million of them currently in New Zealand.  So the government allows and encourages open hunting of them.  On one trail we briefly talked with one hunter returning from his traps with two rifles slung over his shoulder and a bag with 5 possum, on their way to be sold to private fur companies.  There are also active programs to trap them or poison them.  The poison program is controversial but effective.   They use large pellets made of some substrate that the possums like, laced with a poison called 1080, which, for the chemists in the audience, is sodium fluoroacetate (i.e., the sodium salt of fluoroacetic acid).  The objection is that the poison is non-selective and kills anything that eats it.  The counter is that the possum is the only thing in the remote bush that actually eats the pellets, and the pellets are mostly dropped by air in the remote bush.  They also post signs all over the place, so any creature that would just read the signs and pay attention should be OK!

Arthur's Pass is the main stop for the TranzAlpine Scenic Railroad between Christchurch on the east coast and Greymouth on the west.

It runs one round trip every day, bringing loads of tourists and New Zealanders into the mountains, dropping them off for a few hours, and then returning them.  We intend to take this ride when we get to Christchurch.  Here it is approaching the Arthur's Pass train station from the west, headed east toward Christchurch.

One of the things that makes this train special is the Otira Tunnel, an amazing 18 km long tunnel under the mountains from Arthur's Pass heading to the west and downhill, emerging at the village of Otira on the Otira river, alongside the highway.  Why did they do all that work to build a tunnel, rather than just follow the Otira River gorge like the highway does?  To understand, you need to know two things.  (1) the Otira River gorge is very steep and winding, as is the road that goes through it, with grades exceeding 10% in places; (2) ordinary trains are limited to a grade of about 3% - otherwise it requires special locomotives and tracks, like the cog railways that can still be found in several mountainous regions around the world.  So it was much better to tunnel through the mountains and create a gentle, consistent 3% grade so they could use ordinary locomotives.

Here is the tunnel face at Arthur's Pass.

Here comes the train, approaching from the east.

Here it is after its stop at the station, continuing west just as it enters the tunnel.

Bye bye, choo choo.

As a digression, the streambed next to the tracks at Arthur's Pass was fascinating for Tyler.  Common amongst the mixed gravel were these large, black rocks, and smaller flat pieces that had chipped off of them.  It's not coal - it is slate, the metamorphic result of shale altered by high pressure and temperature several kilometers below the surface, then uplifted by orogeny (mountain-building processes), and finally exposed by erosion of the overlying rock.  See how it fractures in this sequence of photos.  It started out big in the first photo, and then I broke it into progressively smaller pieces.

We took a couple of field trips during our stay at Arthur's Pass.  One was a tramp (hike) called the Dobson Nature Walk.

Here is the memorial to Authur Dobson, after whom the pass is named.

Here is a great big rock along the beginning of the track, and another one toward the end.

The other field trip was eastward on the highway toward Christchurch.  The highway first follows the valley of the Bealey River, which joins the Waimakariri river and takes its name.  The Waimakariri opens up to an archtypical broad, flat braided river valley.

On this trip we saw these magpies, another foreign import.

Several places we saw this beautiful little flower, which Paula still has not been able to identify, despite buying every book she could find on New Zealand Flowers.  If any of you readers can definitively identify this, please comment.

One final digression:  Paula is assembling a collection of the odd road signs we have seen, but Tyler just has to comment on this one, because it is so misleading.  The obvious message is that if you drink and drive you will die.  The clear implication is that if you refrain from driving and drinking you will NOT die.  So far as I know there has been only one exception to the rule that everybody dies, and we know from historical records that he drank wine and drove moneylenders from temples.

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