West Coast

We were expecting rain when we reached the other side of the hills on the West Coast. We also expected a windy road over said hills. As fortune would have it, we got neither! Nice, sunny weather and a road that ACTUALLY showed some logic into it's creation as it went through the valleys and stayed flat rather than undulating through the hills. 

It was a nice drive.  Our first stop was just outside of the west coast town called Westport at an area called Cape Foulwind, known for it's seal colony. It was a nice, sunny day but as it was the winter the colony was not very populated like it is in the summer. Still, there was a good number of seals lounging about. I'd heard it was called Cape Foulwind because of the smell of the seals. However, apparently it was named so after Captain Cook was anchored on the coast for a few days during his exploration to NZ and the winds were so foul it knocked his ship about. Indeed, there were some pretty crazy high waves we saw--would not have wanted to be out on the water. It was a nice little area, but we probably saw more fur seals back in Kaikoura. 

Our next stop was a bit further south down the coast in the small town of Punakaki. Here, they are famous for their pancake rocks and blowholes. Millions of years ago these rock formations were pushed up from under the sea and now they are being eaten away at the strong tides that come in and crash up against them. The formation of the rock is thin, flat layers--like a stack of pancakes--hence the name. 

The cool part of it though is the blowholes. The rushing water has formed pathways through the rocks and flood into the area during high tide. When there are big swells the water everntually hits an area where it has nowhere to go but up through the big holes in the rocks. Some of the water got pretty high! It was another neat, native NZ feature and worth the short stop.

Our last stop of the day was another town a bit further south called Greymouth. It's not the most picturesque of towns, but the hostel had free internet and there is a NZ brewery called Monteith's and it's main brewery is in Greymouth. They offer a very inexpensive tour that includes tastings and the option for a cheap meal afterwards. John and I have really enjoyed the Monteith's beer and cider here, so we decided the tour was worh a go. The tour group was larger than I expected it to be--all young people though. A fair number of English and Irish kids (go firgure) and mayde a few Kiwi's.  The tour guide was really nice, but the best part was at the end when you got to taste all 7 varieties of their beers, plus the cider, plus a glass of whichever one you preferred. They make really great beers and I particularly enjoy their ciders. At one point, you go to go behind their bar and pour your own beer from the tap yourself--the group really liked that bit. We also got to taste all the different kinds of hops they use in their beers. It was a nice little evening and we capped it off with a meal voucher for a delicious burger. Apparently that brewery is undergoing a multi-million dollar rennovation later this year, so it willl be even better for tours once that is completed. But, besides that, there wasn't much else to see in Greymouth.

The next morning it was off to another town about 30 Kms south called Hokitika--the Jade capital of New Zealand. Jade, or sceintifically called Nephrite, or called Pounamu by Maoris, is a semi-precious rock used a lot by the Maori people and a coveted stone for making jewelery and carvings. The west coast area surrounding Hokitika is known for it's natural supply of jade on the beaches and rivers. However, it's quite difficult to find as you can't always tell what's jade and what's not, and also you can really only find shards or pebbles of jade on the beaches. The local Maori tribe owns the rights to the river, where the best jade is found, thus they control the access and the prices. 

When we first got there we spent some time combing the beach, looking for anything that seemed to look like Jade--though we couldn't tell for sure. Turns out we found nothing but rocks. It's quite difficult to find it on the beach, and locals say you just have to get lucky on the particular day you look. We then checked into our nice little backpackers right across the beach called Birdsong. It was a nice little place, with a good kitchen, cozy living room with log fire, and comfortable rooms. The owners were really nice, and they had a sweet Australian Kelpie dog named Sid. They suggested to us some of the nice walks in the area before the rain came--as it was supposed to come the next day. We made our way out to a nice place called Hokitika Gorge, where there was a big swing bridge over bright blue water from the melting glaciers. It was quite pretty, a nice stop. 

On the way back into town we took the path around a lake and stopped at a nice waterfall that was just off the road. 

That night the 4-bed dorm in our room was full, which seemed a bit odd since it was such a small town and we hadn't had a full share room in quite a while. We were chatting with one of our roommate for the night during dinner, a nice French guy named Marc. He seemed nice enough, a bit chatty, but nice to talk to. And then we went to bed. . . . HOLY FREAKING MOLY.  He was the WORST snorer that I have ever met in my life! John and I have encountered our fair share of snorers--in share rooms and during tramping trips--and most of those people aren't too loud, or they will stop after a while so you can go to sleep. Not this guy. It was loud and disgusting and never ending. It woke me from my sleep around 1 a.m. and that was it. I tossed and turned for a while trying to ignore it, but I simply couldn't. I gave up in disgust and went out to the couches in the lounge. After a while, when I couldn't sleep there either, I went back into the room. It was quiet, and so I was hoping to fall back asleep before he inevitably started again. No such luck. He started again, just as loud and disgusting as before. I turned to John's bed to see if he was awake--the snoring was keeping him up too. Finally, around 4:00 a.m. we decided to go sleep out on the couches because he simply wasn't going to stop or get better. I think we finally fell asleep around 4:30-5:00 a.m. Four hours after I had first woken up. It was not a good night and I was not a happy camper in the morning. We he woke up, John and I went back into the room, around 8:30, hoping to get a bit more shut eye. He apparently asked John before he left why we slept on the couches and John told him. He knew he snored like that as apparently he broke his nose a while back, and he apologized, but still--there is no need to subject that onto everyone else. 

So, after that horrible nights sleep, luckily the next night it was just the two of us in the room. It started pouring that morning so we hung around the backpackers playing games, doing puzzles, engaging in some Trivial Pursuit (90s Australian version). The weather cleared and the sun came out around 3:00 and so we decided to venture out. We went to the only shop in town where you could carve your own Jade (the others are just workshops where you can buy already-carved products). It had been recommended to us by the bone carving guy back in Whitianga. It was called Bonz N' Stonz--and while we couldn't afford the Jade carving ($150 per person) we were hoping to pick the guys brain about where to find some and how to recognize it. He indeed confirmed to us that the ones we found on the beach were not Jade and that it was hard to find a good, carveable piece on the beach. He mentioned how some of the carving studios in town will sell some of their leftover pieces. We had been to one of the bigger ones in town but hadn't seen any spare slabs on sale. So, he went to the back of his studio and grabbed a bucket of scrap pieces and told John to pick some out. John managed to find two pretty good carve-able pieces that he would do back in the US once he had his own tools. The guy was super nice and told John he could have the pieces for $10 for the two--he was really willing to be helpful because John was to keen to find and carve his own greenstone. It was a very generous offer, as this was native New Zealand jade pieces and the stuff can go for way much more! John, responding to this guys great generosity, gave him $20 for both pieces. The guy even showed us this workshop thing online where he did a workshop away from his studio and showed John how he could get all the stuff he needed and make the tools himself from a hardware store like Home Depot. We talked to him for quite a long time and he was just really nice. We were glad that we stopped there because otherwise I don't think we would have ever found a decent piece on the beach. 

We capped off our time in Hokitika with a quick stop over at a Glow Worm Dell just down the road. You walked up a small path to where there were no more lights and you could see tons of glowworms all along the rock walls that surrounded the path. 

So John left Hokitika happy, I was happy as well, but sleep deprived as, even though we had the room to ourselves, I had to get up a 6 a.m. the next morning. We had stayed up later than I intended the night before finishing our 90s Australian trivial pursuit game with some nice, young Kiwi guys and two American girls from California. But the next day, it was off to the Franz Josef glacier!