Sorry for the Group Email

From Franz Josef on the west coast we headed to Queenstown, New Zealand’s tourist mecca. Ahead of us, we found out, were two days of the best driving anywhere on Earth.

Lots of places have good driving. France has some pleasant stretches of road, as does the Lake District. California has some outstanding pieces of coastal highway, although you run the risk of being stuck being a train of SUVs if you try to drive on them.

But all of these places look like dull pottering through Bethnal Green compared to the South Island. It’s not that it’s particularly fast. That’s lucky, of course, because the last thing you’d call our bottle-green Toyota Yetz was fast. But the corners twist and flick across mountain passes and over lakes. The hairpins and switchbacks test the tread on your tyres and exercise the hairs on the back of your neck.

And the scenery. The scenery. It’s difficult to describe the scenery without descending into adjective-exhausting verbosity. Big. Muscular. Overpowering. Outstanding. These are all words which despite their place in English as superlatives, don’t do the job. Can’t do the job. New Zealand’s scenery, and particularly that over the Haast Pass, over which we now drove, is, in the most accurate and literal sense of the word, awesome. Unknowably, hugely, captivatingly immense. Literally incomprehensible. I wanted to touch it all at once.

It’s also annoyingly unphotographable: no matter how many times you pull to the side of the road to grab another shot, the results are never quite good enough. The road took in Lake Wanaka before flicking over to Lake Hawea and curving off towards Queenstown, and I wish there was more to say. There isn’t, though, so I’ll leave you with this: go to New Zealand. It’s nice there, and you’ll like it.

Dave has regained his words. Some of them, anyway. For the full photographic orgy of the South Island, head to the Flickr set by clicking here.