Flying solo - Arthur's Pass

Friday 24 January

What a huge day! Started by leaving the weird Woodend Beach Holiday Park with its (passive) aggressive signage & managers, having a great big brekkie with Ella & Josh, smooching with the hoodlum hounds then taking Caroline to the airport for her long flight home. There was some debate as to whether we could take the caravan through the drop off zone - I googled and it just advised a height limit which we were comfortably under... but then realised we had to get round a really tight 90 degree corner with no notice given of this - yikes! It was super tight. We said our fond and slightly weepy farewells and parted ways for another couple of years. Safe travels, Linus!

From there we embarked on the long drive west through Arthur’s Pass to Jackson’s Retreat. There were heaps of bikers heading the same way as us - the Woodstock Rally was being held for it's final time near Hokitika and everyone who owned a bike seemed to be going over Arthur's Pass... most of them stopping like us at the Sheffield Pie Shop to get a little sustenance along the way!

Unlike us, however, they seemed to roar away and zip up the hills - we had a near crisis close to the top of Porter's Pass as we crawled up a nasty 1:10 or 10% slope for about a kilometre, round curves with extra steep bits, nearly over heating the engine along the way. Finally reached the summit and pulled into the rest area to cool down - both us and the engine! We met a lovely fella named Bruce who gave us some tips for handling the gradients with a caravan and chatted about our Odyssey and about music - he used to be a roadie. Currently he was videoing the bikers going to the rally, and would be recording the rally itself for posterity.

The landscapes were epic - Lake Lyndon was stunning, Castle Hill was Narnia, and the engineering miracle of the Otira Gorge Road defied belief and gravity!

We stopped at Lake Lyndon to have lunch and try and calm Louis' very frayed nerves - there was a road along the lefthand edge which said not suitable for towing vehicles but a fellow caravanner a day or two later advised that heaps of vans come through there as it is a secret detour to avoid the steep bits of Porters Pass!

Castle Hill looked stunning and super busy with people climbing all over it. Further along the road was devastating evidence of the fire that swept through this area back in December.

We knew there would be steep roads but nothing prepared us for exactly how steep… going up Porter's Pass was nothing compared to the descent! It was quite heart stopping going though the Otira Gorge - especially as the sign heading in designated the gradient as 16% (quick maths made that roughly 1:6!) We crawled down at a snail's pace trying not to over heat the brakes - fortunately there was a fuel tanker ahead of us going super slow so we were not as much of an inconvenience to other drivers as tanker guy!

Fortunately Jackson’s Retreat was an oasis of calm when we finally arrived - the owners put us in an odd little spot which looked more like a roadway, but it was fairly flat so we stayed hitched and enjoyed our exclusive wee space!

It was a great place to decompress with a waterfall walk up on the hill behind us and a night trip to see the glow worms which were all around the stream right by our park, before we settled in to sleep soundly in Banjo’s warm embrace!