Kingston to Fox Glacier (or, "How driving in New Zealand is like Snow Cheap")

So after we raced the train on Sunday morning, we piled our dusty, sweaty selves back into the car and headed on to Fox Glacier.  Note that all of the bumpy bits on the map below are mountains:

Unless you were with me in Eritrea (*cough*Mandy*cough*), riding a bus on field trip in and out of Asmara (elevation 8,000 ft), you may not have much concept of what driving these mountains is like.  Think about long, long stretches of switchbacks, all going straight up hill.  And these are some serious switchbacks.  "Serious" as in - to make the turn, you'd better slow down to ~20-25 mph.  All of you Snow Cheapers could just envision taking the switchbacks up the reservoir behind the tennis courts...in a 10 year old Nissan sedan.  Exciting!

Try as I might, I couldn't really capture the roads very well:  

I know this isn't a switchback.  I just told you that I didn't capture them very well.

But I did capture some pretty excellent views:

And a cyclist who was TOTALLY slacking off: 

Kee-Min didn't really think that the 12K this morning was enough of a workout for him, so he jumped out of the car and told me to pick him up at the top.  What could I say?

One final word about this drive: I'm glad we rented a car with cloth seats.  If those seats had been leather, I would have been sliding all over the place.  Just driving these sections was like a solid core workout.

Part of the way through the trip, we stopped for lunch at one of New Zealand's oldest hotels, the Cardrona Hotel. 

At first glance, this place seemed to be halfway through the mountain range, in the middle of nowhere.  In truth, it's just down the road from a ski resort, and I expect the area is hopping in the winter.  On this summer afternoon, there were a mix of driving and biking tourists enjoying a lunch on the lawn.

One of the points of (sort of) fame for the Cardrona Hotel is that its bar/dining area was apparently the "inspiration" for some scenes in Lord of the Rings.  Kee-Min knows the details of this better than I, but he's busy twittering or some such, so he'll have to chime in later to comment.  In the meantime, for those of you LOTR fanatics, does this look at all familiar?

Bar at the Cardrona Hotel

After enjoying a salt-and-pepper calamari salad (me) and bangers and mash (Kee-Min), we hopped back in the car for a few more hours of driving.  Another common feature of the roads around here is the single-lane bridge.  It must save quite a bit on construction and maintenance, and really isn't too disruptive, since there aren't that many cars on the roads.  These bridges are seldom governed by traffic lights - instead, you are at the mercy of your judgement, the judgement of the driver in the oncoming vehicle, and the "Yield" (or in New Zealand "Give Way" sign).  Here is our trip over the longest single-lane bridge in New Zealand - this one is fancy and has two 'passing bays'.  The shorter ones offer no such feature.

The "Give Way" sign shows who yields.

At the start of the bridge

Passing Bay #1 (of 2)

After 3+ hours of winding mountain roads and one lane bridges, we emerged and caught our first glimpse of the ocean:

Ahhh....

At this point, we were less than an hour from Fox Glacier.  We stopped for some photos, then finished the trip and found our accommodations.  We took some MUCH NEEDED showers, ate, and got to bed.  Tomorrow morning, we've got a date with a glacier!!