Great roads: Haast to Queenstown

I’m gonna make a big call (this might be because I don’t know poo from playdough): I reckon the 213km ride from Haast to Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island is one of the best in the world.

I’ve ridden the Swiss Alps, Pyrenees, North Vietnam, Wales, Coromandel and NZ Northland. Truth is I’ve never sampled the Rockies in the Good ‘Ole or the Adriatic so I might know jack.

I think this ride has so many factors that come together to make it top tier. There are rides that offer an hour of great corners, relative freedom from nanny states, or great views but very few put it together in spades.

For the sake of this argument let’s stand on the pegs of the Yamaha Tracer 900 GT, readjust the landing gear, settle in behind the bars and set off up the hill from Haast on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. It is one of the most isolated towns in the western world, a population of 250 locals and chokka with tourists and has the dubious honour of being one of the wettest …

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We rode it both ways recently, and the trip “down the hill” was in bucketing rain, a challenging and unforgettable experience with waterfalls tearing their way into the mountains, sometimes falling down the walls beside us, spraying us with a fine mist. A truly amazing ride!

Peel out of the only servo that sits a few hundred metres from a pristine beach and point the bike at the gigantic, frequently snow-capped mountains ahead. Within seconds the road is crowded by the rainforest of Mt Aspiring National Park: thick, moss-covered, dripping and ancient. The well-surfaced road twists and turns until it comes up beside the wide, grey, rocky flood plain of the Haast River.

A sliver of the most stunning milky turquoise water tumbles its way, as it has for millennia, to the sea. Keeping concentration is challenging as the view takes not only your breath away but eats into attention.

Straights are short and infrequent, campers and rubber-neckers in abundance will often do odd things, especially as many of them drive on the other side of the road. Corners are predictable and often with a touch of camber; it wouldn’t take much to convince me Kiwi road engineers were bikers.

Flipping from corner to corner, all the senses are challenged. The earthy odour of the rain-forest, other worldly bird calls blend with the sound of the bike on the overrun, bouncing off the rock walls.

Remember a cable lock so that a quick stop can be made at any of the waterfall walks. Most are only a few metres off the road (on the downhill trip we stopped to marvel at Fan Tail Falls without removing a single stitch of clobber) and well worth the effort.

Haast Pass proper is a short trip to the Sound of Music set and definitely a place to stop and get a photo. Slow down whatever happens here: no-one is paying much attention to the road.

If the idea of a 30-minute round trip to the Blue Pools takes your fancy park up just over the crest and check out the stunning errr… blue pools. It’s often teeming with young backpackers, which could be enough motivation for many riders to sally forth.

Settle back into the groove and at some stage you’ll notice that the stream by the road is now flowing in the opposite direction as the valley floor opens up. Ahead there are hundreds of square kilometres of magnificent mountains, many used in the snow season by rich folks to slide down. And break wrists.

The Makarora locality sees the road break out into drier, more open high country, not far from the Tundra line. It coincides with the sapphire blue expanse of Lake Wanaka dropping your jaw on the left. The road now snakes its way for about 15km along the banks. Often the forward vision is excellent and setting up a line of three or four tin tops can be done with arrogant ease.

A dog-leg to the left through the curves of The Neck sees another bloody big expanse of water, Lake Hawea, unfold to the north. It’s head down now as the road weaves left and right, up and down for another 15-ish klicks on an almost flawless surface and great glimpses of the road ahead.

Every paradise has its shit bits, so we settle into a few minutes of real world and work our way through the town of Wanaka, keeping eyes peeled for signs to Queenstown via Cardrona and Arrowtown.

The Cardrona Valley Road is not a ramble along a gentle set of rolling hills but a scramble through a road guarded on both sides by mountains that scratch the arse of the gods.

Just outside town the Kiwi sense of humour and generosity is on display at a farm fence strewn with hundreds of bras. My first encounter with this strange monument was nearly 20 years ago. What started as a spontaneous bit of fun has now been a little more formalised and raises funds for breast cancer care.

The town of Cardrona is a little like Thredbo: set up for the snow tourists. Think lots of small chalets and apartments.

We then head for the Crown Range Road, Unzud’s highest. A bit like a river meandering along a valley then tumbling over massive waterfalls, this glorious bit of tarmac snakes from well-made corner to the next until it reaches a set of switchbacks that resemble a bitumen staircase.

Sadly, that’s it. The road emerges on the main drag between Cromwell and Queenstown. We turned left and took the fast highway through Roaring Meg Pass, a great ride in its own right, as accommodation in Queenstown is eye-wateringly expensive. It was such a shame we had to re-do it the next morning to make it to the airport for the flight home.

The ride will take most of the day with a few stops and sight-seeing walks. The ride from Haast to Queenstown is an absolute cracker, I don’t think that limb I went out on is too thin. And, err, sorry I meant to qualify this by saying “on a good day”.

The locals do call it the “wet coast”.