The last half hour of the boat trip and the subsequent three hours of warm sun very nearly obliterated the bumper pack of thunder (with added lightning) we experienced on Saturday, when the ominous rumbling continued all night in batches of up to two minutes’ uninterrupted dwarfish percussion.
As we retraced our route north (there being no further southerly options) the heavy rain persisted fitfully and became evident in swollen rivers and dramatic cascades. This is a land of mountains and water and in this unusually wet summer, we’re experiencing it at its squelchiest best.
As we arrived in Haast for the night, we learned that our route north was impassable, due to a landslide, and flooding, with consideration of evacuating the town of Fox where we’d planned to stay. Locals are optimistic of the road being cleared, which will be good for us, since the alternative is 2,000k the other way round.
The route today included a second ogling of The Remarkables and a number of lakes but also a new pass across the Crown range and a quantity of water reaching alarming proportions. The Crown Pass is a high area of tussocky grass on hectically rolling hills that reminded us of a worn, slightly mouldy candlewick bedspread flung over an embarrassing heap of junk when an unexpected aunty comes to call. The road insinuates itself round the least resistant contours like a slug trail of silver. The views of rugged peaks and the occasional peaceably cultivated valley were glimpsed very fleetingly through the heavy cloud cover, and often made whimsical and romantic by veils and wisps, or menacing by rolling, lowering great clods of it. All of it contains and indeed is, water. All of it must fall, and fall it did and at the Gates of Haast, the turbulent, violent, angry waters thundered mercilessly over the hardest of rocks, meeting such resistance that they flung themselves in fury from one immovable object to another until they flooded the valleys below. Humiliating and humbling and quite terrifying, especially when Adrian insisted on leaning over all the edges to get the most dramatic photo.
This coast has penguins, but we are here during the three months they go to sea, so we drove south (again) to a possible breeding ground. We did see one blue penguin (the same one as yesterday?) and had fish & chips in a converted caravan at the end of the universe. The proprietor was most interested in the e-reader and determined to have one, but foresaw long hours in the library at Hannah’s Clearing downloading them by dial-up.
While we were there, a dozen locals came in for takeaway food – almost all the residents of Jackson’s Bay. For myself, I am heartily sick of chips. We are currently in the Hard Antler (yes, really) a bar in Haast – no – the bar in Haast which is quite literally a barn in construction with two tables made of a couple of tons of rock each and a few camping chairs, easy to prepare for rough Saturday nights. The décor is a couple of dozen stuffed animal heads and 80-odd sets of antlers. What it says on the tin.
The clientele of this bar (any many others we’ve patronised) is uniformly scruffy. No-one outside the major cities seems to do the dressing up thing, not even on New Year’s Eve. There is, however, a wide variety of interpretations of grunge: predominately black, barefoot or sandals (i.e. Japanese sandals or flip-flops or thongs), crop trousers, scurrilous T-shirts (any colour, but dingy) but it is in the hat and hair department where there is most ingenuity. Shaved is a popular option, with baseball caps, variously jaunty (also scurrilous) and those Smurf-like Rastahats much favoured by gloomy, disconsolate youths in Nissan Micras. Young men of Maori heritage and cartoon-wild electric ringlets can wear any headgear and look amazing, but the bush hat seems favourite. A few have invested in confections of bleach and rose-pink punk which they ostentatiously primp in every tricked-out hot-rod reflective window. Younger women seem to work hard – in bars, cafés, restaurants, driving buses, running motels and generally keeping the tourist industry well-oiled. They are also usually fit, slim, pony-tailed and smiling. Older women seem to run to fat and often to excess, and to a startling degree. This may be a calumny, and what I notice is in fact Australian, British, US tourists of course, but when they emerge from private houses, service doors, company vehicles and battered 4 x 4s with a dog in the back, they look local. And shoes are a namby-pamby pommie affectation. Some shops and restaurants actually have to ask customers to put on some clothes before going in. So glad I didn’t bring the DJ and tiara.