Bra-vo!
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
67
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
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Queenstown,
South Island,
New Zealand
Thursday, February 28, 2008
After breakfasting, we were on the road again. We stopped at a garage for fuel and also got a bottle of Radiator Stop-Leak, which we poured into the radiator, hoping it would make the approaching hills a little easier on the engine. We hoped it would make it a little cooler for us as well, as we were still having to run the heater and fans on full whenever we gained elevation.
We continued on to Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, where, due to the bad weather, we decided not to bother stopping. Shame really - from what we could see, they look to be beautiful. The glaciers are unique, as they start up in the Southern Alps and descend to less than 300m above sea level, through temperate rainforest, which looks like a mismatching of concepts. They are also unusual as, despite having retreated since the last ice age, they are both currently advancing. Fox Glacier is advancing at a rate of about one metre per week, whilst Franz Josef, although more variable in its rate of growth, has been measured at an almost reckless (in glacial terms) 70cm per day.
Further along the coast, the road heads inland and crosses the Haast Pass. At 562m, this was a bit of a test for the radiator, but, aside from one large belch of black smoke from the exhaust, we made it to the summit without incident and stopped for a while to take some photographs.
At Wanaka, we made the decision to turn off the major highway to Queenstown and visit an unusual tourist attraction around the town of Cardrona. We found a hitch hiker who was also heading for Queenstown. He wasn't put off by our warnings that we were intending to stop for a while and take photos and that the van was pretty slow up hills, so we picked him up.
Between Christmas and New Year 1999, for reasons unknown, four bras appeared on a wire fence along the edge of a sheep farm in Cardrona. By the end of February, there were 60 bras, but they all disappeared again. News of this spread across the country, and by the end of October there were 200 bras on the fence, which were again anonymously cleared. The story then spread as far as Europe, and by early 2006, there were 800 bras on the fence, sent from all over the world.
Despite the fence being largely regarded as a quirky tourist attraction and the fact that farmer John Lee (who became the fence's unofficial custodian) said that at least 90% of the letters he received about it were positive, local pressure mounted to have it removed. The council claimed it was an eyesore and a traffic hazard and some claimed that Japanese students in nearby Wanaka were likely to be terribly offended by it. There was of course also a "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" type element locally who may have been responsible for the earlier disappearances, but the overwhelming attitude towards it was favourable. Strange that the council could therefore claim to have any leg to stand on in giving it such an indefinable, subjective label as 'dilapidated eyesore'.
In the end, after some careful scrutiny of the maps and deeds, it was discovered that the fence was in fact on council property, constituting part of the 'road reserve', not John Lee's farm. His refusal to remove the fence no longer protected it, and in September 2006, the council stripped it of over 1500 bras. They were used at a local festival in an attempt to make the world's longest chain of bras. Despite falling short by 100,000 bras, they nevertheless raised $10,000 for charity.
Despite having been published the following year, our guidebook was unaware of all this, so we were led a merry dance looking for it.
Unfortunately, what our limited map of New Zealand had failed to show was that this route to Queenstown involved crossing a very large hill. We stopped, topped up the radiator and briefed our Uruguayan hitcher in the heater/fan procedure. It became apparent that his English wasn't really up to this sort of thing.
Despite the roadworks, which caused all of the traffic to have to move very slowly uphill, we made it to the summit without blowing up. We were greeted with fantastic views of Queenstown, the valley and the daftly but appropriately named 'Remarkables' mountain range at the foot of which Queenstown sits.
After a bit of a wait whilst the road was briefly closed and a digger was three-point-turned, we got to Queenstown. We dropped the hitcher off in the middle of town and eventually resigned ourselves to having to pay for parking and deposited Lucy in a multi-storey.
We did a few bits of admin, then decided that as we definitely intended to go to Milford Sound and we had to head back up north to Hokitika at the end of the week, it would probably make sense to push on to Milford first. That way we could have a good few days' stay in Queenstown without having to break it up.
Before leaving, we got ourselves a bite to eat at what claimed to be the 'Best of British' fish and chip shop. Well, Queenstown has the largest number of overseas visitors of any town in New Zealand, so its presence was almost as inevitable as the Irish Pub. As mentioned before, Kiwi chippies are a bit odd in as much as they don't have a load of food ready to serve: they fry to order and, as a consequence, take for bloody ever. Despite knowing this, one very important factor drew us in.
Mushy peas! They served mushy peas, the divine, sweet green heavenly ambrosia without which fish and chips is horribly incomplete. They didn't have scraps, HP sauce or dandelion and burdock, but perfection would have been a little too much to hope for.
As it turned out, so was mushy peas.
Mushy peas are not peas which are mushy. Yes, their name could be used to describe such a thing, but that is not what mushy peas are. Mushy peas are marrowfat peas which have been cooked in salt water with a pinch of baking soda, maybe a little mint or sometimes a pinch of sugar (strictly optional), and they break down into a mushy consistency. A sort of extremely simple pea soup, reduced so as not to be too runny. The baking soda breaks them down much quicker than just boiling them to a pulp in salt water, so, if done properly, you don't need food colouring to keep them green. Some people will tell you to add mashed potato to help the consistency. Ignore them. They are false prophets.
Mushy peas are not, have never been nor ever will they be, garden peas which have been boiled in vegetable stock, sprinkled with mixed herbs and mashed with a fork. Such a dish is possibly, in its own right, quite palatable. When we have ordered mushy peas however, it is not. It's just terribly disappointing.
Best of British? Think not.
