Our 16 day loop tour of the south island should be about 2500km so about 150km/day and easily manageable. With some days a blast of 300-400km we have more than enough time to relax and spend lots of the days hiking and general sightseeing.
The roads are just two lanes (there are no freeways), they are a little bumpy sometimes and also some occasional road works to slow you down but at the 100km speed limit it’s easy to make progress.
There are very few vehicles here and those that you do see are 50% tourist campers - many of whom are Kiwis enjoying their own country. (Bill Ford (Grandson of Henry) tells us that there are 800m vehicles on the road WW and he thinks that there could be 2.5bn by 2050 and is worrying about where they will all fit. I hope that they don’t come here).
New Zealand began to be populated by “Westerners” about 200 years ago but even now has only 4.5m people. Getting in to live here is still quite tough-they don’t seem to be materially ambitious enough to force-feed the economy through immigration.
Every bridge, stream and culvert seems to be named after someone and I begin to muse, as I drive, that it would be quite nice to have my name up there amongst the others, on the side of the road- for all to see. We pass “Haas River Bridge”, “Lost Spade Fork”, Hilda’s Stream”, “Freddies’ Half Bridge” and “Hidden Culvert”-there must be room for me. A ditch would be OK. Gotta find someone to talk to.
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