12 March; Colours and scenery

Today we drove from Christchurch to Queenstown. That was quite an ambitious 500km on our first day of driving. Luckily Harri offered to drive the whole way, despite the slight jet lag, headache, dehydration and general tiredness. My role was to map-read and try to keep Harri (and myself) entertained by reading the Lonely Planet for general information about the places we were passing (almost like a live tour...).

There were a couple of interesting observations. First of all the scenery in New Zealand is very diverse. That makes for very interesting driving. We passed green pasturelands filled with cows and sheep. Fields fenced off by tall majestic poplars. Drier land with small round shrubs. Rolling hills. Big rocky mountains. Snowy peaks barely visible under the cloud cover. Even some jagged pillars caused by erosion.

Secondly the colours. Every scenery had a characteristic colour. Emerald green fresh grass. Yellow and biege dry land. Almost purple gravel pouring down the mountains (where rain had caused rivers, which had caused erosion of the topsoil). Iridescent hills of grey and brown. Dark brown rocks. Grey gorges. Bright blue turqouise sky. Dark blue mountains in the distance shadowed from the sun. White snowy peaks. Absolutely wonderful - no wonder Lords of the Rings was filmed here, it really is something out of a fantasy book!

Lake Tekapo combined both the beautiful scenery and wonderful colours mentioned above. This lake was a really bright turquoise blue. I'm not kidding. Apparently the blue colour is caused by "flour-y sediment deposited at the bottom of the lake when the it was formed by two glaciers rubbing together" (or something similar, not that you care about the geology lesson). It was absolutely stunning!

Thirdly that there are plenty of interesting road signs in this country. The most effective: "horse poo!" (for sale, presumably used as fertilizer in gardens?). The most creative was: "CSI, body snatcher" (advertising for a church, as in the resurrection...). My person favourite was "the faster the speed, the bigger the mess" which was among the many signs trying to educate, persuade, scare people into keeping to the speed limit.

Tomorrow's trip will be from Queenstown to Franz Josef. I'm hoping that the weather will be kind and let us see the snowy peaks of the Fox Glacier.

A couple of side comments:

- That its becoming a trend to have bathrooms with windows into the bedroom (gross!)

- The longer you travel, the harder it is to fit the same amount of stuff in your suitcase...