Yesterday afternoon we drove home over the Rimutakas.  It had been snowing earlier and there was plenty of dirty snow on the verge of the road.

For those that don't know the Rimutakas it's not a pleasant road to drive.  It's a steep, narrow, winding road and there's a sheer drop off to one side.  On Sunday it was icy and dangerous, in fact there'd been a bus accident earlier that day when a bus had slipped in the ice, and finished up blocking both lanes of traffic with the rear tyres hanging over the edge.

When we drove over there were heaps of cars parked along the side (some of them actually partially blocking the traffic lanes).  There were families that had come up to see the snow and had let their children out to play in the snow on the road.  At one point a kid came sliding out from behind a car and stopped just at the edge of the lane as we drove past.  If he'd been unable to stop, or if our car had slid in the ice, we would have hit him.

What are these people thinking?  They're so excited about letting their kids see brown slushy snow that they let them play on a busy and dangerous road, partially blocking the lanes with their parked cars and making it even more dangerous for those that actually need to use the road.  Idiots!!!

ETA: Winding.  I forgot to mention how winding the road is.  There's not a straight stretch on it as it winds it's way up the hill.  I drove over recently in the dark and often my headlights didn't pick up the cats eyes in the centre line because the car was actually pointed out towards the drop as I manouvered around a corner. 

OMG how stupid, but in saying that we were walking down the middle of the main road in Waiouru (state highway 1) yesterday morning. We were lucky however that all the roads around us were closed and the only traffic we had were locals that were driving so slowly that it didn't really matter and they knew that was to only place people could walk anyway.