Winter Roadie

Whether you live in New Zealand or are a visitor, an excellent scenic road trip to consider is a manageable loop starting and ending in Christchurch. There are lots of possible circular trips in the South Island but a route including Otago’s Maniototo, Danseys Pass, Mackenzie Basin, and Ashburton Lakes goes through very diverse, distinctive areas and is rewarding for a week, a month or a life time.

This winter has been marked by one low pressure system after another with only a few good sunny days in between. So, when almost 10 days of good weather was forecast, we jumped on the opportunity to see the South Island mountains dressed in the white stuff.

Weather forecasts can change but we lucked out and enjoyed a week of sunny skies and the best single trip for photography in memory.

We first headed south for six hours to Ranfurly and the Maniototo Plain. This is a geographically distinct, elevated plain ringed by mountains on three sides. It is sparsely populated with primarily pastoral farming and a very special landscape. One of the best know artists to capture its aesthetics is the painter Grahame Sydney. Maniototo is Māori for “plain of blood”; not referring to violence but to the color of a native tussock.

From Maniototo we went north via Danseys Pass, a steep, winding dirt road periodically closed in the winter, to reach Mackenzie Basin. The basin is a vast, dry tussock land with the Southern Alps on its west, big braided rivers and turquoise-colored lakes like Ohau, Tekapo and Pukaki.

The trip was completed with a stay in the Ashburton Lakes region also known for the vast Hakatere Conservation Area that is integrated with large high-country cattle and sheep stations (farms). Strangely enough, from this area it is only a couple hours’ drive back to Christchurch.

Enjoy the post pictures and for more images from these special places take a look at the South Island Portfolio.

Note that there are over 50 pictures in the gallery; I have purposefully not put it on auto scroll so you can click the forward or back arrow to manually scroll at your own pace.

Maps from Google Map Pro