South Sea Island Alpine Tiki Tour

I managed to get over the hill to Christchurch (Canterbury) from Franz Josef (South Westland) last Sunday.

It never ceases to amaze me , how the conditions can change so drastically .

From this ...

to this .....

in such a short space of time

In the heart of my soul . I would that I had been born in Celtic lands
But I was born here . a Celt in Maori lands . And my heart is content

[ Edited by: Toataiaha 2008-08-20 15:01 ]

The road had been cleared , well one lane of it anyway , so we were escorted over the Pass . We had to wait about an hour at
Otira for our turn .

Saw this at Arthurs , never had snow up to me windows before

These are Kea , parrots , who migrated from the rain-forests to the mountains .
Highly intelligent , and equally destructive .
Like adolescent vandals with too much time on their hands

Given five minutes , this one will have the windscreen glass out , and be in the car , wreaking the inside , with a speed that would shame a dismantling crew

Same with this wee rascal , why bother picking the lock , when all ya gotta do is take the door apart

[ Edited by: Toataiaha 2008-08-21 14:55 ]

We get the same kind of snowfalls here, minus the parrots.

Is Edmonton in Polynesia ? Snow like this is not common here , thats the point .

not the best of photos , but the trees here in this shot are rainforest not alpine

This storm was out of the blue ,totally with out warning .
Some folk were trapped in their vehicles , on the mountain passes .
The car park at Temple Basin could not be cleared of snow , snow that was meters deep , because of the cars that were trapped beneath .
Such was the speed and ferocity of the storm

That's pretty wild! I didn't get it at first, I figured it's winter down there and snow in the mountain passes was not uncommon