From coast to coast

On the way to Arthur's Pass, the name of the alpine pass that goes from one coast to the other, we stopped off at a vast beach with vicious looking surf. The beach itself was grey and had the biggest driftwood I've ever seen on it, I'm talking half trees here. The place was called Shipcreek after a ship that was wrecked on the coast of Australia got dragged across the sea to this beach. Although it looked rough it was still a cool looking beach and we ended up following a path just behind it. This led into a tropical swamp forest, obviously. Pools of tea coloured water sat beside lush trees and plenty of ferns, one of the national emblems along with the Kiwi.
Onto the pass. Arthur's Pass is often closed to to snow as it transverses snowy mountain ranges. It was open for us though and was an amazing drive. We started competing as to who had the best view out of our window. Winding roads led us beside mountains and under rock shelters with thousands of gallons of water pouring over the top of them. Long spanning bridges added to the ride. We stoppped off to take some snaps and a Kea jumped onto our windscreen and wing mirror. A Kea is a large-ish parrot looking bird, but grey on the outside and pink underneath it's wings. They're quite persistent birds and it then jumped onto a nearby campervan and began attacking the aerial. Apparently they're a bit of a pest.
We drove through a couple of extremely expensive one road villages and arrived at a place called Hokitiki. I think this was actually before we started on the pass but never mind. Hokitiki was a nice looking town that seemed to specialise in bone carving and jade gemstones. These are not in the same league as the jade we saw in China but for some reason the Chinese jade is looked down upon here. The town has a lush green hilly background with even larger snow covered peaks beyond. It reminded me of Hong Kong or Thailand type tropical hills, apart from the snowy mountains that is.
We drive through Arthur's Pass village on the way and although it's nothing to write home about we do note that most small towns here look much better than their Australian counterparts which are mainly dull and unappealing.
The mountains and the road continued to amaze as we passed more ski fields and gushing rivers.
Eventually after a day of twists and turns we arrive at Christchurch.
A nice place it is too. Quite leafy and unsurprisingly has many churches. The one on Kilmore Street I found particulary funny. It did remind me of England quite a lot as there are a few Tudor style buildings and it has a good looking English-style square. Starbucks again seem to have bagged one of the best looking buildings on the main square too.
There was the obligatory statue of Queen Victoria as well as Captain Cook. Some Cook statues get vandalised from time to time as the Maoris aren't always too pleased that the great explorer found this place.
Being an average Yorkshire boy, Cook wasn't supposed to amount to much but by a couple of turns of fortune he became Captain of a ship and went on to 'discover' more places than anybody else who ever lived. We'd read a bit about him in Australia, he was the first to land at Sydney and claim the land as Britain's before the French arrived. He also discovered Hawaii and was the first known Westerner to see surfing and remark on it in his journal. This was also the place of his demise as on a return visit the locals killed him in a misunderstanding. Anyway back to New Zealand. For the first people, like Cook, who landed here times were difficult. Many skirmishes broke out as a result of misunderstandings of the Maori Haka dance when new arrivals landed. This was seen as an invitation to fight but that's not really the case. The Dutch most notably started flying off from the handle. New Zealand's Western name actually came from these wacky Dutch. Once the white man did settle here the Maoris felt that it would be good for them anyway as food was in short supply on the Islands. The white man brought pigs and sheep and often traded with the Maoris for land. Unfortunately the Maoris misunderstood the nature of some of the trades and are still to this day disgruntled about land that they see had wrongly been taken off them.
Guns were a big deal to the Maoris. The North Island Maoris traded for guns first and and what do you think they did as soon as they got hold of them? Headed south to slaughter other Maori tribes that hadn't got guns yet. There's no messing with these guys. This then carried onto the South Island where battles between Maoris on Maoris and then white men raged on for a while. Eventually treaties were agreed and things calmed down. A totally different scenario to Australia.
Thinking about it I'm sure the Dutch named the land New Zealand because of it's greenery but I could be wrong. I do remember that the original Maori name, Aotearoa, means the land of the long white cloud. Maori legend has it that the islands were created when some mystical fisherman bloke caught a huge fish or some similar crap. At least Maori legend is more coherent than the ramblings of the Aborigines.
Although Christchurch was a nice place we couldn't hang around, we had a very expensive ferry to the North Island in two days.