Our stay in Kaikoura has ended and the next stop on our route is to be Mt Lyford, an area that Bruce in particular, wanted to see. I looked on all our maps for Mt Lyford, thinking it was an actual mountain, only to find it wasn’t, but rather the name chosen for the ski resort in the area. The actual mountain is Mt Terako at 1742m above sea level.
It is at Mt Lyford that there is NZ’s only log cabin village. We parked over in the grounds of Mt Lyford Lodge for the night, which was a pretty peaceful place to stay. The lodge itself was a beautiful building, but closed most of the week as summer is the off season for them.
We were having a quiet time reading when we were joined by a friendly little South Island Robin. It did not seem to perturbed by the dogs and was happy exploring the bushes next to us and even taking a few morsels off the dog’s bone.
The next morning, Bruce decided to tackle the gravel, hilly and windy road up to the ski field. The log cabins were nestled in the woods on either side of the road as we went up, and it looked some of those were owned by permanent residents. The scenery was spectacular, but it wasn.t long before we could go no further. After finding a suitable place to park (which turned out to be not so suitable, but more about that later), we got out to explore.
There was a path leading away from the road to we took that and it proved to be a little gem – a trail through a stand of black beech and totara trees. Shady, cool and beautiful. It only took about 20 minutes for us to end back at the car park, so we headed off in the other direction. This route took us over grassy ridges with spectacular views of the mountain, and down to a little lake.
The views were amazing. The hills are so dry and brown, with the only splashes of green being from the beech, macrocapra and cedar trees, and the occassional willow.
We finally headed back to the motorhome and made our way down the mountain, and the road in to Hanmer Springs. We thought all was well until we parked up in the NZMCA Park, and at 1.30am Bruce decided that the fridge was not working and had to investigate. It turned out that parking on the slope at Mt Lyford, without turning the fridge off, was probably not a good idea. The fridge was working on power though, so we made the decision to book into the Top 10 Holiday Park at Hanmer while we sorted it out. However, not much sleep was had that night.
Away From Home NZ 