We have arrived at the foot of the Southern Alps and staying at a campsite in Franz Josef. The weather has been pretty cold and bleak here since we last blogged but apparently it’s going to get better over the weekend.
Lets start back where we left off last time first of all. We headed west from Richmond yesterday morning along state highway 6 towards Westport (isn’t that supposed to be in Mayo!?!?!). Part of this road took us through Buller Gorge where the Buller river flows. We made a stop at the site of the longest Swing Bridge in New Zealand, 110m. $5 each lets you take a walk across it and explore a bush walk on the other side. Gold panning used to be big business along the river and if you want to can hire a pan and try and make yourself rich! With all the rain though the river was to high for any of those sorts of shenanigans.
Don't look down
Westport itself has a bit of a frontier town feel to it, which I suppose comes from the gold mining history as well as the coal mine that’s still in operation just a bit north of the town. The main attraction for us was to be found at Cape Foulwind a little bit out of the town. Now the place lived up to its name, as it would have blown the head clean off you out there. The cape is also home to a seal colony. After a little walk from the car park around a headland you see a whole pile of seals lying about on the rocks. They are a bit lazy around this time of year as it turns out next month they start having pups.
The weather steadily deteriorated last night and with a good bit of the south island already having snow yesterday we thought we would wake up to some today. Instead we got lashed with rain and a whole pile of hailstones most of the night, which as it turns out makes a lot of noise inside our little spaceship!!
So after a peaceful nights sleep it was time to soldier on south along the coast. We made a stop at Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks. Now these rocks are not as I thought a couple of big circular pieces of stone sitting in the sea that look like pancakes…they are actually stacks of rocks with lots of layers in them and they do look like pancakes. After that description you all know i should have been a geologist!! Anyway the rocks have been eroded into lots of crazy formations and were pretty impressive. (Unfortunately we haven’t been able to put photos on again which would help with the description but sadly wireless conections in New Zealand aren’t all they are cracked up to be!)
Pancakes anyone?
So that brings us back to a computer, at a campsite in Franz Josef. We got a quick glimpse of the glacier itself as we arrived in town this evening but we will get to see it properly tomorrow. We doing a half day trip up onto the glacier, so I’m guessing we might be cold again!
Jonny
