On holiday: Te Anau

I will write a future post about the TALES symposium and the weekend, spent with Sandy and her family, and for now will skip to our week’s holiday in the southwest of South Island.

Sunday morning 17^th Feb, we packed up (leaving two large suitcases in Sandy’s house) and set off for the Southern Alps. Having been warned to make sure we always had some food with us, as a lot of our trip would be through lovely scenery with no facilities at all, we stopped in Gore for coffee and shopping so we could picnic en route to Te Anau.

As we went through Lumsdon (a town of very few horses), we heard the air raid-type siren sound, and men running across the road to the volunteer fire service.

Despite the small volume of traffic, a long queue formed quickly when the road ahead was blocked. Initial rumours were of a crash, and we saw that fire tender rush past us. Later news was that a huge tree had come down, and the local firefighters’ chainsaw was too small, so it would be at least 2hr before a larger one materialised and the tree could be cut up and moved. (On the way to Wanaka three days later, we saw the remnants of the tree. Yes, it was very big!)

A kind biker told us about a metalled road about 4km back that would take us on a large detour to loop north and end up a few km along the main road, beyond the blockage. We found it. It was metalled – for the first two miles – but then was gravel. We learned quickly to close all windows as vehicles approached us, and leave them shut until the dust had died down. What we should have done, we realised on arrival in Te Anau (pronounced Tee-Ar-now), was leave them closed the whole time: even our cases in the boot were dusty. We assume it will rain before we return the car. If not, we will need to borrow Sandy and Philip’s hose.

Whoever named the roads in Te Anau had a sense of humour. The ‘high street’ is named ‘Town Centre’, and the road behind it is ‘Park Lane’. We found good, citrussy ales from southern South Island.