South Island - one long scenic drive...
Once we drove out of the the "metropolitan" Christchurch area (and I use that phrase advisedly, it took all of 10 minutes), we headed into the Canterbury Plains towards Akorai Mount Cook on State Highway 1. Pretty much from the moment we got out of the city, Highway 1 was one great big advertising hoarding for New Zealand. Actually, pretty much the whole of South Island is one long avertising hoarding for New Zealand. It's a bit wierd and takes some getting used to, but it really is another mountain, lake or panorama around every corner, and just as you think you've seen the best mountain/lake/panoramic view, a better one pops up around the next corner. I wouldn't say that it ever gets boring exactly, but we probably have suffered from "stunning view" fatigue.
The speed limit here is mostly 100km/hour (about 60 miles) outside of urban areas. This sounds slow until you're travelling along the uppy-downy-twisty mountain roads when 100km/h is what a lunatic would drive (note to my parents: Rory did not drive like a lunatic, honest :))About 3/4 of South Island appears to be uppy-down-twisty roads, and those are the *highways!* However, they don't seem to have much of a concept of dual carriageways here either, so you can get stuck behind a r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w driver (usually overcautious fellow tourists) and not be able to overtake them for 20 miles whilst a convoy builds up behind you.
One bizarre thing is that after a while, in the rural areas, you often find that you don't see another car for 10-15 minutes, especially at this time of year. If you catch up to, or are caught by another vehicle, you almost feel resentful that even this one other car is one the road, that's how empty it is here! There are only 4 million people in total in NZ and only about 1m or so of those of those live on South Island, so that's not really many people living in an area the size of England and Wales.
The speed limit here is mostly 100km/hour (about 60 miles) outside of urban areas. This sounds slow until you're travelling along the uppy-downy-twisty mountain roads when 100km/h is what a lunatic would drive (note to my parents: Rory did not drive like a lunatic, honest :))About 3/4 of South Island appears to be uppy-down-twisty roads, and those are the *highways!* However, they don't seem to have much of a concept of dual carriageways here either, so you can get stuck behind a r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w driver (usually overcautious fellow tourists) and not be able to overtake them for 20 miles whilst a convoy builds up behind you.
One bizarre thing is that after a while, in the rural areas, you often find that you don't see another car for 10-15 minutes, especially at this time of year. If you catch up to, or are caught by another vehicle, you almost feel resentful that even this one other car is one the road, that's how empty it is here! There are only 4 million people in total in NZ and only about 1m or so of those of those live on South Island, so that's not really many people living in an area the size of England and Wales.
posted by Cathers at 6:31 pm
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