Tuesday, September 25, 2018

West Coast and Glaciers

3/24/18

Stopped at a nice beach cliff overlook and opened all of Bongo's doors wide to get rid of the mosquitos. We then drove to Fox Glacier. The main viewpoint and road were closed due to flooding. But we went to a distant viewpoint to check out the glacier. We then drove to Franz Joseph Glacier. Those 2 glaciers are unique and interesting b/c they are in a temperate region and almost reach the sea. At Franz Joseph, we hiked up to a viewpoint called Robert's Viewpoint. It put us up above the foot and rather close to the glacier, which was really cool. It was a really amazing view of the glacier. Almost the entire hike was in the rain, but it was a cool hike. Quite varied and often walking up little streams and also often on rocks. There were lots of really cool suspension bridges: some really high and some super long. And then some cool cliffside built-in steps. Along the way we saw a cute little chamoix (wild goat thing from the european alps).

In the evening, we drove to Hokitika and went through a crazy, crazy heavy rain and lightning. A rainstorm on par with some of the craziest I had been in while living in Florida. We had delicious fish n chips at Hokitika and then camped near Hokitika gorge.

3/25/18

Visited Hokitika Gorge. It's supposed to be a surreal color of turquoise water, but today it was grey from all the rain. Back in Hokitika town, we walked along the Hokitika driftwood beach. Hokitika is a cool old town with mining history. Would love to come back in better weather someday. We drove to Greymouth. It's a cool little city on the ocean and a river. It has mining history as well. We drove out to breaker point where we were super lucky and saw 2 of the rare an endangered Hectors dolphins.

After our quick visit (and grocery shopping) in Greymouth, we drove to Punakaiki. It was a scenic coastal drive. Punakaiki is famous for its pancake rocks, which were pretty cool! It's this section of coast where it looks like rocks are stacked upon each other like pancakes. While there, we also explored a cave.

We drove back to Greymouth, then up and over Lewis Pass in the mist and rain. Then drove the really crazy (winding and bad surface) road to Kaikoura, arriving at midnight and camping hidden down by a river.

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