February 15, 2021

We drove to the West Coast of the South Island today (also called the Wet Coast, because of its high rainfall).  The only route from Wanaka is via the Haast Pass.  This road runs through Mount Aspiring National Park.  At 562 meters (1,843 feet) it is the lowest pass that traverses the New Zealand Southern Alps. It took us about 3 hours to get to the coast.  Lots of stops and little forest walks along the way to check out waterfalls and look-out points. 

We also paid a lot of attention to bridges – most of which were one lane. We must have crossed 8 or 10 one-lane bridges. One had a traffic light; one had no control, and the others were right-of-way by direction of travel. The one with no control is the longest one-lane bridge in New Zealand at nearly 750 meters. It has two sets of pull-over bays to handle opposing traffic.

The Haast Pass / Tioripatea was used as a pass by the Maori people in pre-European times.  The road through the pass wasn’t completed until 1965.  The pass takes its name from Julius von Haast, a 19th-century explorer who also served as geologist for the provincial government of Canterbury.  We learned this when we stopped at the Department of Conservation (DOC) Haast Visitor Center, which one of the nicest ones we’ve been to.  Haast itself is a “blink or you’ll miss it” settlement. 

 We enjoyed our picnic lunch by the angry Tasman Sea, which actually wasn’t that angry today, but was still impressive.  The Tasman Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and Australia.  It is informally referred to as “the Ditch” by both Aussies and Kiwis.

West Coast photos:

Then we did the return trip, marveling at the difference in views made by the time of day and the rain clouds in the mountains.

We have received a couple of concerned questions about the increase in COVID alert levels in NZ.  We are not in any danger and are so far not inconvenienced by the changes.  We are following all the rules and have much fewer restrictions than in the US.  (We are 600 miles from the known cases and on a different island.)  We have confidence that the Ministry of Health will sort everything out soon.