Rain and more rain Officially it's only 232 Km to Arthur's Pass but the road becomes more difficult after I leave Franz Joseph and I miss a lot of beautiful scenery because of the rain. Through a blurred windscreen I can make out precipitous mountains with snow on top and although I have breakfast at yet another lake, it’s another sodden affair because it’s raining so hard. In that respect it is also like our West Coast. It looks beautiful on a sunny day, but when it rains, and it rains a lot, it looks sad and dismal and you feel as if it will never end. At one of the few rest areas along this route, someone has put out two armchairs to take in the view of the beech -clad mountains, but as there’s no shelter, there’s no point stopping, though there's a sign close by which reads "Free showers and Tarot Readings." I'm not quite sure how those things go together. I would have preferred to break this section up a bit more, but there are few hostels ...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people