Greymouth & Christchurch

So I ended up in Greymouth. And here I desperately needed a car. The route from Greymouth to Wanaka is suposed to be great. It runs through the ancient forests of Aspire National Park with the 3000m peaks of the Southern Alpes as a back drop. In that place I want the freedom to stop wherever I want and smell the forest, and not where the bus driver stops, wich is usually at an over priced cafe where the driver gets free coffee. But to get a car I needed a credit card and to get a good quote I needed to book it at least a week in advance. My credit card was lying around the IEP office since half September but for them to send it to me I needed a fixed adress for a while. So it was a good moment to get another job.

I found a hostel that needed woofers. In turn for free accomodation and breakfast I helped cleaning the place every morning and I made up the beds. Depending on how many guests were leaving it took us between 2 and 3 hours. I was on vaccuum duty. It's a big place and carpet everywhere so it takes a while. But they got a vaccuum cleaner you can ty to your back. pretending you're a Ghostbuster while at work makes the time fly by. By noon we were usually finished with work but there isn't much to do in Greymouth. And it rains a lot over here. One day I went to the beach looking for greenstone. In Europe we know greenstone as jade, it was very valueable to Maori tribes now they make pendants and earrings out of it for the tourists. it became rare but you can sometimes find it on the West Coast beaches and in river beds. So I went scavish hunting on the beach and it was so much fun. I felt like a kid again. I did not expect to find any greenstone but still I was a little jealous when someone else found a pretty big greenstone just 20m from where I was looking. I did however found a lot of pretty green stones. A greenstone carver told me what they are called but I forgot the name. When it was raining I just stayed inside and played pool. I got a lot of practice I can tell you that.

The last weekend in Greymouth there was a motor bike street race in town and things got more exciting. The hostel filled up with motorcycle enthousiasts and the town was full with the sound of revving engines and the smell of gasoline and beer. I went to check out the race with a fellow woofer. A motor race in the streets of a normal town is pretty exciting. They charged 10 dollars to see the race in the town centre and you couldn't take any beers into the centre so we didn't pay for that. We just walked around the fence and tried to sneak in. After a while we found a way in so we could see the last 2 races up close.

When my credit card arrived after 4 days I could go and book a car. Tuns out all the cheap cars are rented out until the end of November. The best quote I could get in Greymouth was 58 dollar a day. The only solution was to go to Christchurch and rent the car from there. It's a bigger city and over there I booked a car for 25 dollar a day. This also ment I could leave Greymouth a bit earlier and go to Christchurch a few days early to check out the city before I pick up my car. I could get a ride to Christchurch with Gary who was in Greymouth for the race. The route from Greymouth to Christchurch goes over the Southern Alpes and is very nice. Up in the mountains I saw my first Kea, a mountain parrot, and we got caught up in a snow storm. Gary reckons we were probably one of the last cars to make it over the mountains before they closed the road because once we were on the other side we didn't see a car behind us for 30km.

Gary is a weird character. He is Scottish, a retired ship engineer and a big fan of motorcycles and garage sales. His house and garden are full with seemingly useless stuff that drive his wife nuts. Both Gary and Bev are some of the nicest people I met over here. Their hospitality knows no boundaries. They took me into their home for 3 days, offer me way to much food and beer and Gary takes me on drives around Christchurch and the surrounding area. And they don't want anything in return. I helped him with some computer stuff and by shifting some firewood but only because I offered, not because he asked. I think they are just happy to have some company in the house. Gary tells everybody we meet that he brought his wife a young European lad back from Greymouth as a gift. And that's not so far from the truth. Bev likes to talk and Gary is glad it isn't him she's talking to for 3 days.

The city of Christchurch is a sad place to visit now a days. It still hasn't recovered from the 2010 earthquake. The roads are all broken, and they are taking down buildings everywhere, all the time. Part of the city is still closed for the public and guarded by the army. I'm sure it used to be a very nice city before the quake. More English than England they called Christchurch, and there is a part in the botanic guarden that looks a bit like Oxford. But most of the city is one big building site. Locals all have their personal quake story to tell and the wounds aren't healed yet. Just as the rebuild that will take a while I guess. I felt an after shock while I was here. Only 2.8 on the richter scale but the cupboard door opened by itself and I'm glad it didn't happen 30 seconds earlier while I was pouring hot water on my tea.

My hostel

My favorit place on a rainy day

Na na naa na naa na Ghostbusters!

The Greymouth Street Race

A Kea at Arthur's Pass

Christchurch graffiti, done by the safety experts

The ravage in Christchurch

My attempt to show Christchurch like it used to be, without cranes and building sites.

West Coast

The inevitable happened: I got sick. After hanging out with a sick Michael for 4 days and walking through sea and rain it was just a matter of time before I got a cold. Being sick it might not have been my best idea to go to the West Coast, this must be the wettest region in New-Zealand, but I'm glad I did it because it's one of the most beautiful places on earth (I said that before and I think I'm gonna say it a few more times while I'm on the South Island). The West Coast is a small strip of land wedged between the Tasman Sea and the Southern Alpes and it catches all the rain that doesn't make it over the mountains. When it's raining there are water falls everywhere, the rivers become wild and roaring in a couple of minutes and the rain forest is at it's best. The West Coast has only 60 000 inhabitants and the few tourists who come here drive through it as fast as they can.

My first stop was Westport, one of the bigger towns, in the north of the West Coast. It's a slow moving fishermen's town where everybody knows everything about everybody else. There isn't much to see but a seal colony at Cape Foulwind, 16km out of town. So I took one of the hostels bikes and went up there. The cape hasn't stolen its name (named Foulwind by Captain Cook because he battled the winds there for 9 days to round the cape) it took me almost 1.5 hours to bike up there against the wind. On the 3km beach walk to the seal colony I could admire the cliffs and rocks beaten in to shape by sea and wind and I met my first Weka. The Weka is a flightless bird that looks like a cross between a chicken and a kiwi. Weka's are cheecky bastards, they have no fear whatsoever. A Coaster told me that if you leave the door of your house open Weka's will just walk in, parade around your kitchen and look you in the eye like they own the place. The seal colony wasn't very spectacular. Seals are quite lazy and when they don't move they look just like the rocks they are resting on.

Westport is also the centre of the Whitebaiters (the entire West Coast is actually, but Westport especially). The story of whitebait is a bit cruel. Whitebait is the premature form of a trout like fish. They exist as larvae in the sea and only develop gills and scrubs as they hit fresh water when they swim up the rivers to mate. Whitebaiters catch them at the river mouths, somewhere in between their development from larvae to full grown fish. They are still very small,  have the beginnings of eyes and gills but they are still more jelly than a solid fish. Whitebait is a local delicates and every coaster has his favourite river to catch them, or has his favourite whitebait fritter shop (much like we in Belgium all have our favourite chips shop). I didn't try it because I can't imagine Whitebait fritters, which is basically a fishy omelette, taste any good.

The next stop was Punakaiki, home to the famous Pancake Rocks. The rocks are a massive tourist attraction but the village remained unspoiled. Probably because there is nothing over there besides 2 taverns, a hostel and 2 motels. No shop, no petrol station, not even an ATM. So most tourist just stop at the rocks, take pictures for 10 minutes, hop back in their camper van and drive on. It's their loss because it's really beautiful up there, the land around Punakaiki is made up of limestone and sandstone. Thousands of years of exposure to sea and wind knocked it into shape. There are caves carved by the rivers, the beaches are littered with weird shaped rocks (all of them deserve a picture) and of course the famous Pancake rocks that look, as the name suggests, exactly like stacks of pancakes. Beside walking down the beach I also walked part of the Inland Pack track, a 2 day hike in the Paparoa National Park. I didn't do the entire hike because it involves a lot of river crossing and wading through a cold river didn't seem attractive to me while I still had a cold. Also the rivers become impassable very quick if it starts raining and already many hikers had to camp out in the park a few days longer then they expected because of rain. So I only walked the first 8km of the track that has bridges on it. Still very beautiful, inside a river gorge through thick rain forest.

My last day in Punakaiki I got the chance to see the pancake rocks at their best. I got there with high tide during a massive storm. It was biblical. Giant waves crashing down on the rocks forcing their way up through blowholes to create huge fountains of mist. The blowholes normally only operate with spring tide but a storm coming in from the right direction does the trick as well. Truly a powerful spectacle and me and a few other brave souls gladly got soaked to see it.

Punakaiki is great, a place I would like to live. The hostel had great views on the sea and the rocks and I was sad to leave after 2 days. I could not stay any longer because I came unprepared and I did not have enough food with me. 400gr of pasta, 400gr of cheese and 2 eggs was barely enough for 2 days, but with beautiful scenery and loads of free tea in the hostel, I did not care to much about that.

 At the moment I,m in Greymouth. A bigger town and centre of the West Coast. Here I wanted to rent a car and drive down the southern part of the South Island. But that turned out not to be as easy as I hoped. I need a credit card and to book at least a week in advance to get a good rate. So I'm stuck in Greymouth for a while. I found a job in a hostel but I'll tell you more about Greymouth later

 

Cape Foulwind and my new best friend, the Weka

 

The seals of Cape Foulwind

 

Westport coast

 

Views from the hostel in Punakaiki, ocean on 1 side, jungle and cliffs on the other

 

Truman Beach in Punakaiki

 

I tried to make this picture 7 times

 

Inland Pack Track: beautiful jungle

 

Pancake Rocks in good weather

 

A typical West Coast sunset

Picton & Nelson

In Wellington I boarded a ferry to get me to the South Island. For the first 2 hours it was pretty boring, just a big boat on a big sea. So I threw myself to the floor next to a power socket, charched my camera and nearly fell asleep. Chairs are for the ordinary people, backpackers sit on the floor. I even saw 2 people who got their sleeping bag out and slept the entire trip. I got up just in time to see the first piece of land of the South-Island. And what a sight that was. The ship sailed through a network of canals, bays ans creeks dotted with small islands. It's called the Marlborough sounds and it is unbelievably beautiful. On a sunny day it looks like the perfect place for pirates to hide their ship in one of the many sheltered bays.

Picton is the town where the ferry arrives, most people don't stay there for long because frankly there isn't much to see. But I stayed there for 4 days. Partly because I was nackered and I needed some rest. But also because the hostel I found was very good. Probably the best I've been to so far. It's small and quiet, it has unlimited broadband Internet (very uncomon in New-Zealand), free breakfast, coffee and tea available the entire day, an outside hot tub and last but not least they serve ice cream and chocolate cake every evening. Besides a mountain bike trip and a hike on the snout, a small land thong near Picton that goes pretty far into the sounds, I didn't move much those 4 days.

The last day in Picton I met Michael again and together we went to Nelson to walk the coastal track of the Abel Tasman National Park. It's about 50km long and one of the great walks of New-Zealand. Abel Tasman is a beautiful place, it's a big native forest along the coast of the Tasman Sea and you walk from bay to bay, along lonely golden beaches. It's still early in the season so there weren't many people on the track and in the camp sites and that's a good thing. In summer Abel Tasman is called 'hikers highway' and the sea is full of kayakers.

On the first day we had to get up at 6am because the bus came to pick us up at 7am to go to Marahau, the entrance of the park. In Marahau we got in a water taxi to go to Totaranui, as far up north as the water taxis go. From Totaranui we would walk back to Marahau. After a short detour to see the seals at Tonga Island we arrived in Totaranui around 11am. From there we walked to Awaroa inlet where we arrived 3 hours early. The inlet can only be crossed at low tide. So we made us some lunch and waited. There we met our first sandflies. Sandflies are a bit like mosquitos only bigger and slower, you feel them on your legs before they bite. But there are hunderds of them everywhere along the beach, impossible to kill them all so after a while you just give up and now my legs look like I got the smallpox. We crossed the inlet an hour too early because there was a storm coming in and encouraged by Larry, a local who showed us the way to cross the inlet when there's still water in it and who uttered the now infamous words 'well guys, you are gonna get wet anyway', we took our shoes of and went for it. At the other side was our camp site and we managed to get our tents up before the storm.

The second day we also had to start early, there was another low tide crossing 7km for our camp site that we had to reach by 10am. Over hilly terrain as well so it was no easy task. But we made it just in time and the next 6km to our camp site had no tidal crossing anymore so we could take it slow and enjoy the amazing jungle and the nice beaches we passed. By 3pm we arrived at Bark Bay, our camp site for the night where we could enjoy the sun and dry our tents.

The third day was great, the sun was out and no wind. Too bad Michael woke up sick. He barely slept that night and he had a soar throat, not ideal to carry a heavy backpack over the hills for a few hours. But we made it to Torrent Bay by noon. There we had a choice: cross the bay, get wet again but be at the camp site in 15 minutes, or go around the bay and walk 5.5km extra. Michael was desperate for some sleep so we went across the bay. While Michael was a sleep I waited for my shoes to dry and walked a few km up the Torrent river to Cleopatra's Pools, probably the most beautiful spot in the park. The river is full of giant boulders and there is a big water fall. It's great fun to jump from one big rock to the other.

The fourth day was the day the jungle changed into rain forest. Pouring rain started at 7am and it went on the entire day. We had still 12km to go to Marahau. Michael desided he had enough, he was still sick and he wanted to wait for the water taxi back to Marahau. I already got soaked just by breaking up my tent and I thought I couldn't get wetter so I walked to Marahau. It turned out I could get wetter after all. I was completely soaked by the time I got out of the park but I finished my great walk and a warm feeling came over me. The last day the jungle was more beautiful then ever, so many shades of green and water falls everywhere. I was completely alone on the track as well, most people who were still in the park took the water taxi out.

Back in Nelson I could finally take a warm shower and have a real meal, after 4 days of oriental noodles and museli bars I deserved a steak.

 

Marlborough Sounds

 

Awaroa inlet 1 hour before we crossed it

 

Awaroa inlet 1 hour after we crossed it

 

Tonga Beach

 

Tonga Island

 

Penguins?

 

Bark Bay

 

Sun coming up at Bark Bay

 

Cleopatra's Pools