West Coast

We left Wanaka on a grey, blustery day. We retraced our tracks to Makarora before continuing on to Haast Pass and the Gates of Haast.. The guide books talk of spectacular mountains along this road, but today they were shrouded in low cloud with only the briefest glimpses to tantalise the imagination.

The section of road from Haast Pass to the Gates of Haast appeared to be carved out of solid rock. There were many little grottos in the roadside cliffs, each with water cascading down them.

One peculiarity of New Zealand roads is that most of the bridges, even on main highways, are one lane, and traffic in one direction has to give way to other traffic. It seemed that every bridge we came to, we had to give way. After three weeks we still hadn't worked out how they decided which approach had to give way. The bridge over the Haast River at Haast was no exception. This bridge was so long that it even had two passing bays along its length.

The drive up the West Coast was like driving through a green tunnel, and a carefully manicured one at that. The verges of mowed grass extended from the very edge of the bitumen to the embankments, and the embankments were completely covered with vegetation, with no bare earth visible at all. The Rainforest almost met overhead to complete the effect.

By the time we arrived at Fox Village it had actually stopped raining so we walked along the track to the terminal face of the Fox Glacier. The track was fenced in places and signs warned you not to linger due to the danger of falling rocks. Unlike the other glaciers we'd seen previously, the terminal of the Fox Glacier was chaotic jumble of huge ice blocks that had broken from away from the body of the glacier. The river emerged from a gigantic cavern at the bottom of the pile. Some keen climbers and their guide appeared as small dots amongst the ice blocks, which gave some perspective on how huge the glacier was.

The following day dawned clear and our helicopter excursions were able to go ahead. Catharina wasn't feeling very energetic and opted for a 50 minute scenic flight over the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers and the Southern Alps.

I opted for a three hour hike on the glacier itself. Our helicopter landed us about half way up the glacier where we donned crampons (steel spikes strapped to the soles of our hobnailed boots) for grip on the ice. Surprisingly though, the ice wasn't smooth, but was quite pitted where it was exposed to the sun. Another surprise was the amount of water on the surface which disappeared into a multitude of cracks in the ice, eventually to find it's way down into the river far below.

Our guide led us to some weird and wonderful ice formations. We wriggled through narrow tunnels on our stomach - easier said than done because in the tunnel out of the sun the ice was as smooth as glass and traction was hard to obtain. There were caves of all shapes and sizes. The roof of a nearby cave collapsed while we watched - the glacier is a dynamic place and the ice is moving all the time.

The return flight back to Fox Village revealed the incongruity of the place: vast glaciers of ice surrounded by the country's highest snowcapped mountains and separated from the Tasman Sea by a narrow strip of coastal plain dotted with grazing cattle.

Near Greymouth, the concept of one-lane bridges was taken to a new level. In addition to giving way to other traffic, we also had to give way to trains.

North of Greymouth the coastal plains gave way to rugged limestone cliffs. The limestone rocks had eroded into unusual patterns in many places, one of the most spectacular being Pancake Rocks. These rocks have been weathered by wind and sea to resemble pancakes heaped one on top of the other, hence their name. There is also a blow hole here, but the sea was not rough enough for it to be working during our visit.

Our trip was coming to an end and we were headed back to Christchurch via Arthur's Pass. At Otira, on the western approach to Arthur's Pass, we got a puncture. No drama I thought, we'll just put the spare on. In Australia, the spare wheel is required by law to be the same size as the other four wheels. What came out of the boot would have looked more at home on a wheelbarrow. To make matters worse was a large label warning us to keep our speed below 80 km/h. In practice though, 70-75 km/h. felt more appropriate.

From Otira, the road climbed steeply to Arthur's Pass, by far the steepest and windiest road we'd come across, including the Milford Road. Half way up we came some roadworks, where they were building a roof over the road. The idea of the roof was apparently to deflect the frequent landslides up and over the road, thus avoiding having to constantly rebuild the road. A bit further up, they'd built a large viaduct up the middle of the valley, again safe from landslides. Finally we emerged above the forest and the gradient eased for the last section to the pass. Even at 920 m above sea level the mountains on either side of the Pass towered above us. At the lookout, we were greeted by several inquisitive Kea.

From Arthur's Pass, the road descended through what could best be described as a moonscape. There were no trees, a few sparse shrubs and little grass. The mountains surrounding us were covered in gravel. Seemingly quite out of place in this desert-like country were a few oases of green grass surrounding small lakes.

We spent our final morning in Christchurch at the Antarctic Centre adjacent to the airport. We went for a ride in a Haagland, an articulated, tracked vehicle used in the Antarctic, over an obstacle course of mounds and crevasses and a big hole full of water. Amazingly, this vehicle is also amphibious. The Centre itself is well set up and has a giant freezer you can walk through to help you imagine what life must be like in the Antarctic.

All too soon our trip was at an end and we were on our way home. Where had the time gone? We'd spent 19 days in the South Island and hadn't really scratched the surface. There is just so much to see and do in such a small country. One side effect of the drought that was gripping the country was that, from our point of view at least, the weather was fantastic - we had just 3 days of rain.