Traffic Jam Kiwi-Style: Roads, Tunnels, The Coast ...and Nature's Nudists!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

We have left Kaikoura and are back on the road heading towards Christchurch.

We are driving on State Highway One  which follows the coast,  sometimes just meters from the sea  before cutting inland and weaving our way though hills until we reach the northern end of the Canterbury Plains.

We pass the “ghost trees”, a stand of trees that are completely bare of leaves… they have become a little bit of a landmark. Personally I think secretly that maybe we just passed the most flamboyant exhibitionists of the  nudist section of the tree world, because they certainly are rather a dramatic sight.

Since the highway isn’t  a multi-laned mega motorway we sometimes get stuck in a small queue of cars that are following a slower moving vehicle like the trailer in front of us.

Luckily Kiwi’s who are towing a boat, caravan, horse float for trailer generally use common sense and pull over periodically whenever there is a suitable spot to do so and let the traffic behind them pass and everyone we saw was patient and waited until this car with a trailer did just that a few kilometres further down the road.

Certainly tailbacks tens of kilometres long like those that can be considered normal in The Netherlands are unheard of here in New Zealand.

Granted, the Netherlands has over 17 million people crammed  in a country the size of the Canterbury province we are heading into and it’s road network is busy with traffic heading to and from various neighbouring counties as well, but seriously, if this is as bad as a traffic jam gets then we have nothing to grumble about.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)