Arthur's Pass

According to the weather forecast, it is expected to rain further in the coming days, and then it will pour heavily on the west coast. Therefore, we changed our plan and did not continue down the west coast, but turned east towards Arthur's Pass to reach the drier side of the mountains.

The pass road up to the town of Arthur's Pass is nice to drive and also scenically charming. It's not really high, only about 920 m, and the road is curvy and steep in places, but compared to a European Alpine pass, it is rather unspectacular. At a viewpoint, we also had the pleasure of encountering a Kea, who curiously inspected the open trunk of a car. Keas are small mountain parrots that look cute, but are known to boldly attack food bags and other things with their strong beak.

We spent the night in a backpackers' in the town, as it was a bit chilly for camping. The backpackers' is located just outside the town and consists of several small old cottages, one of which we had as our room. It was very nice. However, we didn't find it so funny when the nice lady at the reception told us that Keas might take a liking to our motorcycles, especially to the seat cushions. She offered us to store the bikes in the barn, which we did. However, it was an open shed, so we removed the seat benches, put some logs on them for the exposed cables, etc., and covered everything with our tent tarp. Nothing happened, though...

The part east of the town of Arthur's Pass, which we rode the next day, was much more spectacular in terms of scenery. We passed through a huge high plateau with small ponds, and mountain flowers bloomed everywhere. Beautiful!