The West Coast

Jake at our first stop on the Tasman Sea

2-17. We headed south and west from Motueka on Jake’s birthday along the Motueka River valley where there were orchards of apples, kiwis and hops and up into the hills to Murchison, a goldmining town turned now to tourism because of its good rafting and trout fishing.  The Buller River cuts deep gorges through the hills at it drains towards the Tasman Sea.  We stopped for a coffee and slice of carrot cake at a café just off the main drag.  We reached the sea just south of Westport an hour later and stopped to admire the crashing, foaming waves against a grey sky backdrop.  Further south we stopped in Punakaiki, famous for its pancake limestone rocks and blowholes.  The tide was out so the blowholes weren’t blowing much, but the pancake rocks were fascinating.  There’s a big visitor’s center with a nice café where we had a chicken pie and brie, bacon and pesto sandwich.  Across the street a paved path winds through palms, flax, rata and other wind sculpted trees to views over the rocks.  Apparently geologists are not quite sure how the pancake rocks formed and they seem to mainly occur in that one area along the coast.  We also drove through Greymouth, a larger town with a working harbor.  We stopped at a fish store and Jake bought a small piece of smoked Ling to try.  The cashier pointed out Ling on a fish poster and it looks sort of like a mackerel.

We continued on to Hokitiki, another beachfront town famed for its jade or greenstone carvings. We went into a couple stores where you can watch people carving the stones using air tools and polishing wheels.  Most of the designs are traditional Maori designs.  We hunted for little pieces of greenstone on the pebble beach, but I’m not sure we really found any.  The beach has numerous driftwood sculptures I guess constantly made and remade by locals and tourists.  After our appetizer of smoked ling (not very remarkable), we had dinner at the Oceanfront Beach Resort a few blocks from our motel (the Jade Motel).  I got a seared piece of bluenose fish and Jake tried the west coast’s famous whitebait patties.  These appear to be the West Coast’s equivalent of Maryland’s eastern shore crab cake – available as an appetizer or main course at nearly every restaurant.  Whitebait are tiny little fish about an inch long and the width of a fettucine noodle. The patty has hundreds of little fish bound together with an egg and a little flour maybe.  I tried an Esk Valley sauvignon blanc that had a lot of flavor and for once did not taste overwhelmingly of grapefruit.  Jake’s chardonnay was kind of average.  For dessert we ordered what was described as a baked chocolate delight, but came out as a cold chocolate pudding sort of thing with whip cream.  Oh well, at least it was chocolate.

2-18 A rainbow formed over Ianthe Lake as we passed by, but it was not a precursor of drier conditions. We continued down route 6 150 km to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers.  I think these are the largest glaciers in the temperate region. The road stays fairly close to the coast, but has to go up and down around some steep headlands.  The road banks are covered with ferns and moss and more ferns.  Every now and then a small stand of dark trunk beech trees towers above the low shrubs and tree ferns. It was raining pretty steadily by the time we reached the Franz Josef village.  We got coffee and day old pastries at the coffee shop and studied the map of the glacier paths.  You drive up a narrow road about 5 km to the parking area for each glacier.  The roads are well maintained but have a lot of one way bridges on them.  At both glaciers the paths to get close to the glaciers were closed because of flooding and unstable ground. At the Fox glacier the road runs alongside a raging glacial river and between that and the rain sheeting across the road it felt like a bit of an adventure.  But the DOC lawn mower/brush trimmer was going, so I suppose it was just an average day for them.  We were a little disappointed at not being able to see the glaciers, but we have each seen glaciers on 2 continents before so it wasn’t top of our list of activities.  We continued another 120 km south to Haast where we are spending tonight at the Heritage Motor Lodge.  After a nap and more downpours we took a short drive to the Haast beach.  It’s a wild and lonely beach with not much sign of human presence.  Haast is the gateway to the southern alps and has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  I hope we’ll see tomorrow why it deserves that designation.  For now a rainbow shines in front of the invisible alps.

Our view of the Franz Josef glacial valley

End of the road at the Fox glacier

Ice floating in the river from the Fox glacier

Windblown vegetation at Hasst beach

In the evening we walked up the street to the Hard Antler Bar and Café (the rafters were lined with deer antlers).  It was pretty crowded and you couldn’t order your food until you had a table to sit at.  A German trio invited us to join them and there was also a Danish couple at their table.  All were fairly recent retirees and well-travelled.  The Germans had come via Singapore and Dubai on UAE Airlines.  Jake asked about the recent immigration to Europe and both groups felt there were just too many immigrants to deal with, although the Germans did think their country needed younger people and seemed to hope it would all work out.  The Danish woman used an example of integration problems that was interesting – apparently there is a big pork industry in Denmark (4 x as many pigs as people) and if there are Muslim kindergarteners in a school then the school cannot serve pork at lunch time.  She seemed to feel this was a threat to Danish culture.  We also learned that although there is free college education and free health care in Denmark, taxes on some items can be shockingly high.  They had recently bought a 4 year old Audi 500s for $40,000 and paid $80,000 in taxes! I hope they’ve also got some kick-ass public transportation.  Anyway, a band started to play towards the end of dinner making conversation difficult.  They were pretty good although not my favorite musical style.  It was sort of endless jazz songs meets rap and reggae with an 8 member band that had a lot of brass instruments.  They were on a tour of the South Island to promote a new CD.

A note on motels:

We have stayed at motels the last three nights.  They are going downhill in quality steadily.  The Equestrian in Motueka was very nice – 3 rooms, full tiny kitchen, good wifi – 1GB free.  The Jade Motel in Hokitiki  had 3 rooms but smelled some of dampness and cigarettes and just seemed a little frayed.  We had 500 MB of internet but couldn’t get reception in our room. The Heritage in Haast has one room, no stove, pretty darn basic. 100 MB of internet, good reception, but we used up our allotment in about ½ hour.   The last two we booked at the last minute and there hasn’t been much choice of places left.  I think I probably could have found better places at a better price booking ahead, but we had hoped to camp.  Too wet for that the last couple days!