Arthur's Pass

A Maverick Traveller: The Podcasts of Mary Jane Walker

There’s heaps to do in Arthur’s Pass, the busiest pass between Christchurch and the West Coast in New Zealand’s Southern Alps.

Arthur's Pass is the most commercially important alpine pass in the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s certainly the only one with a regular train service, stopping at a rather Swiss-style mountain station at the Pass.

Once you get there, by car or via the TranzAlpine scenic excursion train service, you will find that are lots of tramps and other things that can be done in the pass.

As for the road, though it was built earlier, it clung to the side of the mountains over the same stretch and was regularly wiped out by landslides. Indeed, the skeptics had the last laugh in a way, when, after about 130 years the government gave up on trying to repair the worst section and replaced it with the 440-metre long Ōtira Viaduct.‍

I was sitting there admiring this marvel of engineering when my rubber-soled sandal was attacked by kea parrots (nestor notabilis), which have no fear of human beings whatsoever and a peculiar obsession with rubber. Several kea gathered on a railing to wait their turn to have a go at my sandals. Kea are notorious for stripping the rubber from car windscreens and wipers and generally trashing campsites. They are also ranked as among the most intelligent birds in the world if not the most intelligent, so it’s a kind of mischieviousness, I think.‍

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/arthurs-pass