PART FOUR (continued)

Choice2: The High Road Home to Christchurch—

FIORDLAND TO THE PLAINS OF CANTERBURY
        Alternatively, this is the high road to Christchurch, and home. From Te Anau in Fiordland, drive Route 94 east to Lumsford, then turn north on Highway 6, retracing your route back toward Queenstown, and beyond to Cromwell. Here cross the bridge and turn left onto Highway 8 to begin the climb north through Otago and onto the high plains of Canterbury.
        Granted, the trip is risky. Not the driving, especially, although there are plenty of steep climbs through winding canyons on roads that, while not heavily traveled, will have slow moving campers and slower moving cyclists. No, the trip is risky because of the chances of missing the Big Attraction along the way, the highest mountain of Australasia, 12,317 foot high Mt. Cook. How can you miss the New Zealand’s Everest? Does its Maori name, Aoraki—"Cloud Piercer"—suggest a possible risk factor?

MOUNT COOK AND OTHER CLOUD PIERCERS
        After passing through tiny Twizel town Mt. Cook and its extensive snowcapped range may or may not come into view. At the turn-off for Mt. Cook and its namesake resort village at the junction with Route 80, you may not be able to see much of the Southern Alps. But you will see the shocking turquoise of Lake Pukaki extending north toward the glacier moraine of Mt. Cook. It’s 40 minutes or more up this valley to Mt. Cook town at the foot of the mountain. Here you’ll find the usual assortment of restaurants, souvenir shops, outfitters, and adventure tours ranging from soft to extreme. There is a wide variety of walks, hikes, climbs, scenic flights, and ski trips available. Don’t let the touristy village put you off—it really is possible to get out among these impressive mountains without great danger of breaking your leg or your budget. Warm clothing and solid waterproof hiking shoes will come in handy for many of these activities, as they have been for outdoor activities throughout the South Island.

LAKE TEKAPO
        Thirty miles northeast of the Route 80 turn along Highway 8 is Lake Tekapo, another remarkable lake reaching north from the dry Canterbury outback to collect the glacial runoff of the Southern Alps. Highway 8 runs through the town of Lake Tekapo like an out-of-control main street strip in a western U.S. frontier town. But beyond the cluster of souvenir shops and restaurants—none of them memorable for positive culinary reasons—is a lake and mountain landscape that is truly sublime. Don’t let the off-putting main street sprawl dissuade you—this locale offers great scenery and a glimpse of one of New Zealand’s distinctive lifestyles, that of the remote sheep/cattle stations of the high plains: Mackenzie Country. Named after James Mackenzie, a local sheepherder who trained his dog to help him rustle from his neighbor’s flocks. After stealing some 1,000 sheep in lower Canterbury in 1855, Mackenzie absconded to the previously unknown high plains in the rain shadow of the Southern Alps. There he found more than a million acres of grazing land, and the region that now bears his name.

MACKENZIE COUNTRY — NEW ZEALAND'S GREAT OUTBACK
        Mackenzie Country is New Zealand’s big sky country. Its sheep stations (farms or ranches) are far apart, requiring lots of this marginal grassland per animal. Drive some of its long miles of unpaved roads that lead off Highway 8 toward the mountains. You will see big scenery—wide open spaces, jagged snowcaps sawing the horizon, stumbling, frothy shallow rivers full of trout, and the occasional ramshackle cluster of buildings that announces a sheep station. But you will see few sheep. Thanks to two infestations—one plant (hieracium) and one animal (grey rabbits)—the fragile grasses of Mackenzie are mostly gone. That means the sheep are mostly gone. And that means that the grand, romantic lifestyle of the high New Zealand outback is dying, as the Mackenzie becomes a wasteland.
        The wasting of Mackenzie Country is the great modern environmental tragedy of New Zealand, the cause of years of intense national political debate. It has resulted in acts of economic desperation by Mackenzie men, acts other New Zealanders consider treasonous. It has resulted in acts of ecological desperation by other New Zealanders, pushing this otherwise politically conservative nation far toward the radical activist left on matters of the environment. Rabbits may have turned Mackenzie Country brown, but they have turned the rest of New Zealand green. Mackenzie Country is fragile, remote, unique land of uncommon beauty and potential value despoiled by thoughtlessness or greed or both. For many Kiwis, Mackenzie Country has become a metaphor for all of New Zealand, itself a fragile, remote, unique land of uncommon beauty and potential value. New Zealanders welcome visitors to show them the splendors and rarities of their isolated land, and to warn them that the fragility of Mackenzie Country may also be interpreted as a metaphor for Earth.

CHRISTCHURCH, AUCKLAND, AND HOME
        Highway 8 turns east, crosses the southern shoulder of the Two Thumbs Range, and begins to plummet toward the Pacific. At Fairlie, take Route 79 east through pleasantly named Geraldine and to Highway 1 at Rangitata. Christchurch is still 90 minutes northeast along Route 1, but the scenic variety of upland Canterbury is now behind you.
        It’s not wholly inappropriate that your last taste of the South Island is urban. Christchurch, despite its English hangover, aspires to the fashionable Yankee-Pacific style so much in vogue in Auckland. Shopping one last time for Maori jewelry, greenstone jade, and Mackenzie Country sheepskins and then eating at Pizza Hut and Mickey D’s may help you begin your transition back to North America.

TRAVEL ADVISORY: LOOK FOR SPECIAL LOCAL EVENTS. At each of your Home at First New Zealand Lodgings ask your hosts if there are happenings of local interest ongoing during your visit. Look for "A & P Shows" — local New Zealand summer festivals that are combinations of country fairs, lumberjack meets and equestrian events. Look for plays, auctions, regattas, parades, and sporting events, events that will let you see the Kiwis at play. You may be the only strange faces in the crowd, and you will feel privileged to be there.

End of Part Four.
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