Jackson Bay, a sick Golf and Queenstown – 21 January 2021

 

Most days you wake up knowing for the most part what is going to happen as you have it planned.  Not the details, just the broad strokes.  On this day the plan was go to Jackson Bay and then drive to Clyde via Wanaka and stay the night there before doing a ride the next day.  We had a surprise or two!

 

The day started cool but the clouds had gone away and the sun appeared.  We thought it would be a really good day to go as far as the road would permit on the West Coast.  It is 48 kilometres from Haast to Jackson Bay and it had been recommended earlier that it is very beautiful and that we should go. 

 

It was an easy and relatively quick drive there.  At one point we drove through a long archway of trees making it feel like we were driving through a tunnel. 

 

Jackson Bay is literally the end of the road.  There is a long wharf for ships to tie up to and a little café called the Craypot.  We had a planned a coffee but when we arrived they were not open. We spent half an hour wandering around and then a fishing boat came up to the wharf.  We chatted with one of the fishermen who came onto the wharf.  They were tying up so they could get a coffee.  Due to bad weather they were sheltering there until they could head out onto the ocean to go tuna fishing.  At anchor were a couple of other large ocean going fishing boats also waiting for the weather to abate.  The cloud had cleared away from the hills and there was fresh snow down to about 1000 feet.  It looked  like it could almost be winter.  It was of course a little chilly. The sea was the colour of tourquoise.

 We had a surprisingly nice coffee and then headed back toward Haast.  We had only gone about five kilometres when I hit a pothole at speed and then the car seemed to die.  A couple of lights came on and I stopped to read what they meant.  It said that there was an engine management fault but that we could still drive safely.  The car sounded like it was running on three cylinders and it had difficulty even going up a small hillock. 

 

When we got back to Haast an hour later there was sufficient cell phone strength so I called VW and explained the issue.  They said I needed a tow to a VW dealer and that the nearest was Queenstown.  I made a call to AA for a tow and got that arranged except due to the distance I was going I had to pay the excess which was three times the amount the AA would pay.  Fortunately, the tow company was at the garage down the road.

 

After three hours waiting the driver loaded the car onto the trailer and took us at speed to Queenstown.  He regaled us with tales of the area for the whole journey.  He didn’t like bikes or electric cars and regarded cyclists as selfish road users who should be kept off the highways. 

 

We heard all about a Canadian couple who had been washed off the Haast road and showed us where it happened and how unlucky they were.  He had been involved in the search and rescue operation.

 

It is a beautiful drive and I am sure if we had been driving we would have stopped to take photos. 

Finally, we arrived in Queenstown.  We found a hotel almost next door to the garage and were  checked in very quickly.  I managed to negotiate a reasonable price.  The room is a studio apartment with some cooking and washing facilities and we have an outlook to the Remarkables.