Getting stuck is part of the deal – some would say part of the fun – of going off-road. If you are by yourself, getting unstuck can be a long and difficult process.

The Nevis is one of the must-do 4WD trips in the South Island, so of course it’s in the book. Here, as a sampler, are the route notes from 4WD South: 115 Off Road Adventures in NZ’s South Island.

It wasn’t long after moving to the South Island in the 1980s that I realised what a difference a 4WD makes to exploring its vastness. A couple of trips and I had the bug, and the truck. I teamed up with Ken Sibly in the 1990s on the first of a series of off-road guidebooks that set the bar for on-the-ground research, detailing every gate, culvert and boggy patch on about 200 different routes from Collingwood to Oreti Beach. 

Te Waipounamu, the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, packs the geology of a continent. Alps and glacial valleys in the morning, ancient lakebeds and wind-sculpted hills an hour or two down the road.  Overlay that geological wonderland with a network of tracks formed by Māori explorers and formalised since as public access and you have the stuff of 4WD dreams. Drive overland, camping along the way, and explore ghost towns, gold-mining relics, and places where humans haven’t even made a dent.