17th - 20th Feb - South Island West Coast
We trundled towards the west coast to begin our jaunt around the South Island with Little Tinker as our home - not a tent!
We kept our legs in walking shape with a stroll around Cape Foulwind (we found the name particularly amusing for some strange reason!) to see our first New Zealand fur seal colony. Getting over excited by the browny black distant lumps we first laid eyes on, I took too many pics as we soon discovered more but slightly less distant lumps to watch. Lots of babblers larking around in the 'nursery' pools bugging their mums to join them.
Further on down the coast we stopped with all the other White Maggots (Carrie's description of the camper vans which block their roads up all year round!) at Punakiki to see the Pancake Rocks - a curious rock formation that all tourists have to stop at! However, it was well worth it as it was quite stunningly strange and very exciting to watch massive waves hurl themselves at the layers of rock and blow holes.
Later on we passed through Greymouth and Hokitika, both major Greenstone areas. The views all along this coast line were amazing - extremely rough and open wide stretches of desolate beach. Beatuiful and totally lush!
We stayed in a little DOC campsite beside a small and isolated lake - isolated until two cars of noisy adolescent Germans arrived. We were serenaded with poor guitar renditions of vaguely familar tunes and a drowned cat. They continued well into the night so we enjoyed making lots of our own noise early the next morning knowing damn well they had hangovers and their tents would not have kept our noise out!
We walked up to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers - defo chilly wind coming off these! Wrapped up, James went up as close as he could as we weren't going to have time to do any real glacier walks. Dipping his little fingers into the icy waters he wished the Germans were here now to give a good dunking.
Later we strolled along a blustery beach to stretch our legs and were treated to a personal show from a pod of Hector dolphins - not pervin' old Hectors though! (Foster relevance).
The continuing journey went inland to real Lord of the Rings country, crossing over the Southern Alps through Haast Pass towards Lake Wanaka and Queenstown. The land changed dramatically from rainforest covered mountains to stunningly bare craggy Gandolf mountains as we headed south east to the other side.
We kept our legs in walking shape with a stroll around Cape Foulwind (we found the name particularly amusing for some strange reason!) to see our first New Zealand fur seal colony. Getting over excited by the browny black distant lumps we first laid eyes on, I took too many pics as we soon discovered more but slightly less distant lumps to watch. Lots of babblers larking around in the 'nursery' pools bugging their mums to join them.
Further on down the coast we stopped with all the other White Maggots (Carrie's description of the camper vans which block their roads up all year round!) at Punakiki to see the Pancake Rocks - a curious rock formation that all tourists have to stop at! However, it was well worth it as it was quite stunningly strange and very exciting to watch massive waves hurl themselves at the layers of rock and blow holes.
Later on we passed through Greymouth and Hokitika, both major Greenstone areas. The views all along this coast line were amazing - extremely rough and open wide stretches of desolate beach. Beatuiful and totally lush!
We stayed in a little DOC campsite beside a small and isolated lake - isolated until two cars of noisy adolescent Germans arrived. We were serenaded with poor guitar renditions of vaguely familar tunes and a drowned cat. They continued well into the night so we enjoyed making lots of our own noise early the next morning knowing damn well they had hangovers and their tents would not have kept our noise out!
We walked up to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers - defo chilly wind coming off these! Wrapped up, James went up as close as he could as we weren't going to have time to do any real glacier walks. Dipping his little fingers into the icy waters he wished the Germans were here now to give a good dunking.
Later we strolled along a blustery beach to stretch our legs and were treated to a personal show from a pod of Hector dolphins - not pervin' old Hectors though! (Foster relevance).
The continuing journey went inland to real Lord of the Rings country, crossing over the Southern Alps through Haast Pass towards Lake Wanaka and Queenstown. The land changed dramatically from rainforest covered mountains to stunningly bare craggy Gandolf mountains as we headed south east to the other side.
posted by Polly and James at Wednesday, March 09, 2005
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