Let’s go back a bit: when we were in Australia, I didn’t really know what to expect for New Zealand. I thought, we would be driving everyday, it would be snowing all the time and there would be lots of hills.
I was wrong about most of those things. There are only actually a few hills, it’s mostly vast mountains! I don’t think there was one minute I was in a car where there was no mountains in sight. They are very beautiful too.
I was also wrong about snow. It has never snowed once during our stay. It isn’t as cold as I thought as well. It’s usually only 10°-18° Celsius when we are out.
I’m also very happy about how fortunate we’ve been with the weather the past 10 days! It’s only rained like twice! Which is quite unusual for New Zealand.
The only thing I was right about was driving every day. We drive to hikes mostly, but also playgrounds, and some tours. I don’t mind the drives I just feel really nauseous. Mostly because of the twisty roads. During the car rides I look out the window and choose the music for the car, I sometimes take naps as well.
One of the coolest things I’ve seen on one of our drives is a tunnel called the Homer Tunnel. It is a 1.2 kilometer (.75 mile) long tunnel that was finished in 1953. One of the entrances to the tunnel was destroyed by an avalanche in 1945. Only three people died while they were making this tunnel. Those deaths were caused by the avalanche. People were intrigued to help make this passage through the Darran Mountain range, because the government wanted it during the great depression and there were so little jobs and this was one of the only ones available for that area. It would have been really hard work to make this tunnel though, because in the beginning they only used pick axes. I found this tunnel really interesting.
Yesterday we did our longest drive. It was 8 hours long. We were driving from Wanaka to Kokatahi. The route we were going to take was five hours, but we couldn’t because of a flooded river. Unfortunately there was only two roads to get to our destination and the other one took 3 hours more…
It was a pretty good drive though. I looked out the window for most of it. I had naps, and listened to some podcasts.
Overall driving in New Zealand is great!
