The luxuries of a powered site last night meant that we could leave the fan heater on all night, something we have been dreaming of for the last three nights. Yes we have lasted three consecutive nights camping in DoC sites. Which means that the other thing we have been dreaming about is having a decent, much needed shower!
The showers at this campsite were not the stuff of dreams but at least we were clean again and able to hit the road without the clothes pegs on our noses! We had planned another scenic drive for ourselves today, this time crossing the country east to west on the Arthur’s Pass. The drive promised to be a belter from the off with views of snow-topped craggy mountains calling us from a distance, we just had to dodge the two escapee sheep causing havoc on the road first.
By now we have grown used to the expectation of encountering something unusual and unexpected around the corner and today was no different. Today’s round the corner surprise was a plethora of stone monoliths randomly sitting on the hillside. Think Stone Henge x10. The guidebook didn’t really explain how they had got there so that just made them all the more mysterious. The drive up to the village of Arthur’s Pass was pretty spectacular but a quick visit to the DoC centre proved quite alarming as it turned out that we were in an area surrounded by at least twenty fault lines and which had experienced several serious earthquakes in the not so distant past. Probably better to not hang around too long then. A quick hike up to the Devil’s Punchbowl Falls and we were off. Just a little further along the road and we saw some of the effects of those earthquakes. Up on the hill was the remainder of a road that had been rebuilt several times before they gave up and built a very impressive viaduct complete with rock slide deflectors!
Our daily search for a campsite was a bit more interesting and time consuming than normal. We contemplated staying round the back of an old abandoned community centre in the very strange town of Blackball. Apart from the dodgy looking yocals/rednecks who looked like they might shoot us in the middle of the night, the newspaper article declaring this building as the most haunted building in the South Island definitely sent us packing.