We were out of the van by half seven for a walk down to see ‘The Pan Cake Rocks’. These are a collection of oddly shaped rocks just off land that are called ‘Pan Cake’ because of how they look. They aren’t flat as I had imagined (flat as a pancake?), they’re made up of distinct layers, like a stack of pancakes. Geologists aren’t completely sure why but it’s to do with when they were formed and a different type of rock eroding away to reveal the layers. Or something. I don’t know ask Ollie, I just thought they looked like an ancient tribe had made them! We spent ages looking at them and watching the waves crash around, whirling round a surge pool and just being generally ferocious. The sun hadn’t appeared from behind the mountains and the air was icy fresh. According to the information there, there is also a blow hole at the site but the tide wasn’t in so we didn’t see it. We were back at our van and off on a morning drive further south to Greymouth and a much needed holiday park for a shower! We hadn’t had one since we left Wellington and it was about time we got clean again!
It was a lovely drive along the coast, around the side of mountains and past signs asking us to be careful of penguins. Penguins? I know! But we haven’t seen one yet! We reached Downinthemouth (I came up with that one!) and it was almost as drab as Westport but a bit bigger. We stocked up on food and found the deserted holiday park. Nothing amazing but it had electricity, hot water and washing machines! We had an afternoon of much needed cleaning of the van, ourselves and our clothes and then took advantage of the internet to plan and book various onwards parts of our trip. It wasn’t the most exhilarating of days but after being in the wilderness for three days it was good to come back to reality and get some things sorted out. We even watched a bit of television!
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This morning we topped up our fuel tank and set off for a bit of a drive east into the middle of the island to find ‘Arthur’s Pass’. I don’t know what made me decide I wanted to go there, maybe it was the name that made me laugh! The road quickly took us into the mountains of the Southern Alps and we made a steady climb as snow caps surrounded us. We passed a lookout called ‘Deaths Corner’ and that really scared me! Later I found out it was named after a coach that turned over on the old route killing a child. What a lovely commemorative name ‘Deaths Corner’ is! Waterfalls tumbled at the roadside into the valley and river below as we passed under bridges that were there to protect us from rock slides. Eventually we circled our way to Arthur’s Pass (Arthur’s Pass...ed away, Arthur’s pass...ed his sell by date, Arthur’s pass...t eleven) and found a tiny village hidden between two massive mountains. Even though it was small it was way better than Wesport, this village had a railway station!
The mountain views up here are incredible and it is weird to think that although we are at the base of them, we are actually really far above sea level ourselves. We put some more clothes on (it’s cold up here!) and looked in on the visitors centre to get some ideas for walks we could do. Eagerly we both chose an ‘Avalanche summit hike’ that would take six to eight hours. However on closer inspection we found that that particular walk was for expert mountaineers and we had none of the appropriate gear required. I was annoyed because I must have left my pick axe and snow shovel at home.
We chose a more novice walk to go on tomorrow and decided to do a few smaller walks this afternoon. Firstly we visited the base of a high waterfall known as ‘Punchbowl falls’ and to get to it we had to walk up what felt like a million steps. But it was probably in fact only 999,999. Lately I’ve been having a battle with my body because it is very lazy and chickens out at the vague sniff of exercise and tries to convince my heart that it will indeed explode if it is pushed. However this is not the case and with a bit of mind power I manage to win my body over and it actually starts to enjoy itself. It can’t sit around in the van forever!
Next we started along a track that would eventually lead out onto a snow field way up in the mountains but as it was now late afternoon we decided it wouldn’t be a great idea to take a three hour walk in search of them. Instead we found a rock and sat down to look out over the valley. I think we could have sat there forever. There is something hypnotic about mountains I swear! Back at the van we made a friend. This friend had amazing green and red shiny feathers and a very scary looking black hooked beak. Our friend is known as a Kea. He, or she, but probably a he because they always get to be the most colourful, was not afraid of us at all and was even considering joining us in the van. I started out all nice and ‘hello birdie aren’t you lovely’ before turning into more ‘Um Ollie, he’s coming a bit close, help me’ as the Kea and it’s beak started to eye me up. Ollie wanted to lead the feathers on even further by giving them some bread but I remembered a sign I had seen earlier which said to definitely not feed the Keas. Like Seagulls apparently but far, far more good looking! The bird looked very much like a parrot and looked like far to much of a show bird to be wild. I think I got a bit of bird envy! Lots of the birds we have seen here are really big and the type that eat other birds not worms! I don’t have a clue of names but I know they are definitely more Eagle than Sparrow!
22/7/12
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