Van Tour – The Maiden Voyage – Day 3 – Rock Art, Unintentional Detours, Scenery and Lake

4 May 2018, Hanging Rock (vicinity Peasant Point) to Tekapo NZMCA Park

Once again it was a good night and warm enough. It was pretty dreary and occasional showers so I decided to have a lazy morning just reading in my cozy bed. After lunch I moved on. The next site on the NZMCA travel application was close by, 10 minutes through country roads. The application links with Google maps making navigation to the site easy. This rock art was spread over three sites. The first was right by the Gravel Roads sign on the right. Unfortunately the site had suffered a lot of damage due to exposure so the art was not very clear.

The second site was a good adventure. The instructions were “50 meters before sign, across paddock (fallen trees) and about 40m up the hill on the left”. There had been a lot of comments about people not finding the site but it was actually easy. There was a stile over the fence by the main road and the stream was visible across the paddock from the stile. My issue was finding a crossing point over the stream which was still full from the rain the previous week. My feed were already wet from the wet grass but I still didn’t fancy going through the stream. After heading in one direction with no luck and I headed back the other way and found a crossing point almost opposite where I had parked the van at the first site.

Then headed up the hill up the valley, past a rotten possum and the cliffs and protective fence came into sight.

At the site it was a bit of a scramble to get to the fence and due to the steepness of the rock I was holding on to the guano covered fence to stop from slipping. The art was in much better condition and there was a good amount of variety, worth the trip.

The third site was described as “500m after the gravel starts – about 20m up the hill (fence protecting the drawings from the road”. These were not the best instructions and many people don’t seem to have found the site according to the comments.  I drove around 500m and there was a farm house and shed so thought I must have gone too far as this would have been a logical thing to use as instructions. I drove just past the last big shed and saw the stile and black pipe over the barbed wire on the left side of the road. After crossing the stile I made my way up the faintest of tracks through the long grass up the hill veering to the right until reaching the cliff protected by a fence. Here there were paintings of a different side and I especially liked the octopus.

I decided to head to Tekapo now clicked on the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association (NZMCA) ground and got directions on Google. I was surprised that it indicated continuting up the dirt road but as I was in no rush and happy to explore followed the directions. I was enjoying the road until 5km later arrived at a gate saying no entry, private road. As I had no internet there I could not confirm if it was a paper road or legal road so had to turn around. Frustratingly it was only 1.7km away from a road junction. After getting back to the rock art site I pulled out paper map and redid google. I decided I did want a scenic route but not excessively so, so decided against the Mount Gay Pass and chose the Middle Valley Road route. Shortly past Raincliff was the Raincliff Historic Reserve. I stopped for a look and the path went uphill between two large rocks up to two separate cliffs protected by fences. I couldn’t make out any art at the bottom site, though could see there was some paint. The top site also was very difficult to make out the paintings. The site was limited in terms of the rock art but was a pretty, though short path.

Shortly after this I turned onto Middle Valley Road, a gravel road. The road was in good condition and had nice views through farmland and then forest. When coming out of the forest I had to stop and take in the view of the green rolling farmland with snow capped mountains in the distance. I was very tempted to spend the night there but decided to push on.

From there it was not long until I was back on the sealed road and heading towards Tekapo.

In Tekapo I signed into the NZMCA park and paid the huge fee of $3 to stay. There were a few campervans, RV and caravans there but still heaps of room so I found a nice spot on the lake side of the site. I was surprised how big the site was but imagine it is packed in summer. NZMCA has a network of sites around New Zealand for the sole use of members which is fantastic.

I settled in for the night listening to the rain. The rain is quiet on my roof except on the vent covers but I find the noise relaxing and drifted off to sleep to the noise of rain on plastic, not quite as natural a noise as the last couple of nights.

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