Golden Bay to Fox Glacier

Monday was the last day at rose's place. After a day of relaxing and going to the dentist I arrived back at Rose's to find Martha there who had come back from her 3 day walk trough the Abel Tasman. We made a nice going away and thank you dinner for Rose and Richard. Broccoli soup and the salmon Richard and I had caught the day before. Because the next day was martha's birthday we had also bought some presents and celebrated her birthday a bit.

The next day we said good bye and headed for Hector on the west coast but not before stopping in Motueka for some coffee and cake for Martha's birthday. The drive was beautiful even though it was dark and raining. We drove through the Buller gorge and stopped at a swing bridge. This is supposed to be the longest swing bridge of NZ but turned out to be a complete joke. You had to pay $5 dollars and it might have been the longest nut certainly not the highest or most impressive one.

Just before Hector is one of the bigger places on the westcoast, Westport. The population of the entire westcoast is 30.000 and there are mainly small towns with just a few hundred people. But even Westport wasn't much. It's just one main street and, as a lot of the towns here in NZ, it had a American Western feel to it. It was almost dark when we arrived at our new hostel which was named the old slaughter house. I don't no why but somehow this gave us a bit of an eerie feeling ;-)! It turned out to be a beautiful self built house which can only be reached by a ten minute walk up a hill. Lucky for us they had a quad bike to bring all our stuff up the hill. We stayed there all night by the fire, knitting and talking to Meredith who was hitching and we picked her up. Her plan was to go to another hostel but decided to come with us for a night and didn't regret it in the morning because the view from the front porch was stunning.

We were really very inactive that morning and it took us till 3 to finely drive from Westport to Punakaiki. This turned out to be perfect timing because when we arrived at the famous pancakerocks it was hi-tide and that is when these rocks show their beauty. The rocks are shaped in thin vertical slices. They don't know exactly how this was formed but it is truly amazing. The waves come crashing in and throught the blowholes the water spurts out like a big fountain. With the setting sun it was altogether just beautiful.

After arriving in the hostel, which was right on the beach oh how I love the ocean!, we made dinner and headed for the local pub. There were only a few people there and after an our of sitting at the bar we met Timmie. At first we thought he was just very drunk (which he was) but he was also a bit special. We think he has a learning disadvantage and as you often see people like this can be very honest and that caused some hilarious situations. The bottom line is that Timmie very much liked these 2 beautiful strangers ;-). We ended up going to the next town with all the other people in the bar to watch a rugby game.

Thursday we did a beautiful 3 hour walk and had dinner in the pub with Deb, a friend of Monique. The night ended in the local radio station which isn't more that a shed in someone's backyard. It was great. The radio station transmits over a distance of 2 km in which 150 people live. They all take turns in making radio for a night. This night it was all reaggea music because the dj was going to the Caribbean the next week. Again we managed to get in contact with the locals and had a great night.

Friday was a very creative day. I made a bone carving and Martha made a knife. Both turned out very good. As our planning was becoming a bit tighter, we had to be in Queenstown on tuesday to pick up Marieke a friend of mine, we drove 4 hours in the dark to Fox glacier and arrived at 10. We went straight to bed because we wanted to go for a glacier walk the next day.

When we woke up it was raining, and as we didn't know then it wouldn't stop for a few days. We didn't let the water stop us and went for a 7 hour walk through cravases and it was one of the most beautiful things I have seen here in NZ. The next day we made a slight change of plans and instead of driving to Wanaka we started a 2 day walk, the Copland track. The guide from the glacier walk said it would only take us 4 hours and at the hut there were nice natural hot springs. Next time a will write al about this walk which turned out to be quite a chalange.