The Wet West Coast

We went to Lake Manapouri after we last blogged, but it rained consistently so we left. The postcards of it however were very nice.

We decided to leave Fiordland and the wet weather and headed back inland and after a couple of days we were in Queenstown once again, we camped on the shore of the Lake and spent a few hours skimming stones. We had planned a walk up Ben Lomond, the mountain that overlooks the town, but the weather closed in again and didn’t stop raining until well into the next day so we didn’t get a chance to do it. We carried on driving through the rain on our route northwards and spent the next weekend at the orchard in Cromwell, not working this time. The owners had kindly allowed us to stay in the staff house for as long as we wanted which we readily accepted, we sat out the rain which had swamped the entire country and were lucky that we were in the south of the country, 150kmph winds and torrential rains hit the entire north island and parts of the south island. Luckily we had a solid roof above our heads.

After the wild weather had passed we said farewell to the orchard for the last time and drove to Wanaka where we collected the one piece of our property that had been recovered by police from the robbery, an ipod speaker. It’s not a laptop or an ipod but every little counts. We spent an interminable amount of time filling out victim impact statements and other bits of seemingly unimportant paperwork with the slowest typing police officer in the history of the world. Lauren and I struggled to contain our laughter when he somehow managed to misspell ‘New Zealand’ at least twice. It was very funny. After an age we left the station and went to camp by the Clutha River near its source at Lake Wanaka, we had our own private beach and went for a paddle in the shallows, Lauren wouldn’t let me swim in it! This was probably wise however as it is New Zealand’s most powerful river.

The next day we began our long slog to the west coast, we initially planned to spread it out over a few days but the campsites we planned on staying at were so overridden with sandflies (the kiwi equivalent of midges) that we left instantly and drove to the safety of the coast, on the way we stopped countless times at the numerous waterfalls dotted along the gorge through which the road runs. We drove through Haast, the most boring place on earth, and within an hour were at our campsite on Lake Paringa.

The West Coast is renowned for its wet weather and we were greeted with exactly that. It rained for the rest of that day, and the rest of the next day, and the morning after that! After spending one night in the van in the rain we decided to check into a lodge in the Fox Glacier township, the whole day we sat on our nice comfy bed watching films on the laptop, using the hot showers and cooked in the kitchen, the only time we left the lodge was to walk 10 minutes to the town shop to buy chocolate and crisps. It was a great rainy day! In the morning we awoke to more rain, albeit slightly subdued. After checking out we drove to the nearby Lake Matheson famed for its perfect reflections of the highest peaks in the Southern Alps including Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. The walk around the lake itself was fantastic, a dense rainforest interspersed with trickling waterfalls that feed into the lake. The lake was amazingly reflective, unfortunately the only reflection we saw was of a thick band of cloud blocking the view of the mountains. Oh well it was still a nice walk. Later that day the weather cheered up to some degree and we went for a walk up the track to the terminal face of the Fox Glacier, the walk through the glacial valley was very nice and the glacier itself was stunning, unfortunately the views were marred somewhat by the fluorescent cordon set up to prevent the slightly more moronic tourists from getting to close to the unstable mass of ice. We ambled back down the valley to our van and drove a few miles up the road to the Franz-Josef Glacier. We climbed a short peak which gave good views of the glacier from low in the valley and watched the precession of sightseers tramping their way up the path just as they did at Fox Glacier. We decided at that point to not take the same old route to see the glacier as everyone else and instead decided on climbing Alex Knob, a 1303 metre peak that gives breath taking views of the entire glacier as well as a 360 degree panorama of the Southern Alps in one direction and the Tasman Sea in the other. It was billed as an 8 hour return trip so we would start in the morning. That night we camped at the nearby Lake Mapourika where we swam (rather pathetically) in the cold water, and prepared our packs for tomorrows climb.

The day of the walk came and we woke up a bit late, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and not a breath of wind. We began the walk at about 9:30 and after 3 and a half hours of climbing up boulders and scrambling over tree roots, 1200 metres of nothing but uphill, we reached the summit. We had been given slight glimpses of the views we might receive at the top, but the lush rainforest we climbed through concealed just about everything. We were presented with an unbeatable view of the glacier that looked so close as to be able to touch it, all of the peaks that stretched either side of the glacier were covered in a deep layer of snow that had been delivered in the heavy rain of the last few days. We lay in the sun for an hour as we recovered from the climb, eating the food we brought with us and enjoying the views before setting off downhill. In two and a half hours we were back in the van and very proud of ourselves, looking up at the thing you just climbed gives you a very strange sensation and is often hard to believe you were up there just a short while ago. That night we drove to the very picturesque lagoon of Okarito where we collected driftwood and kept the sandflies away with a nice roaring fire.

The last few days we have spent on a lake just south of the seaside town of Hokitika relaxing and regaining our energy before our slight detour though Arthurs Pass national park and more hill climbing, providing the weather stays pleasant then in the next few days we will climb up the ominously named Avalanche Peak, an 1800+ metre peak just south of the Arthurs Pass village. We’ll let you know how we get on.

Speak to you soon.