Altitude is the only way to escape the sandflies

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February 5th

We woke early in the middle of a heard of cows all mooing right down our lug holes. We were not best pleased as it was 0700. The farmer was moving them from field to field with his pickup, dogs and a madly loud holler. Katherine parted the curtain to see, at eye level, a cow right the other side of the glass and promptly returned to the door-mouse position.


We didn't have breakkie. We just waited for the cows to leave and hoofed it. Fox Glacier was about 25 km north of our lay by. We entered through a dramatic valley that had been horrifically scarred by the glacier. It was smooth rock with tiny ledges that were completely covered in as many little trees that could grow.


This was our first experience of a glacier like this and it was as awesome as a big lump of ice slowly rolling down a hill can be. Hopping through a stream to get as close as we were allowed, we stood hopefully waiting for a massive lump to break off but it did not so we turned back.


We hopped back into the van and made it the short distance to the Franz Josef Glacier. Franz Josef was the bigger of the two but you could get closer to Fox. The walk started through a jungle and then broke out into a marvelous rocky bed that went 5 km or so to the glacier ahead of us.


We were hopping our own route from big stone to big rock instead of following the dusty single lane track. It was fun, plus the other people were so slow.


About two thirds of the way to the glacier there was a waterfall that both Katherine and I managed to get behind the water flow. It wasn't the biggest but came as such a refreshment as the midday sun passed.


There was a sign as close as Joe Public was allowed to get with all the stupid ways people have injured themselves or worse in glacier country and we thought that it deserves its own blog paragraph and photo.


Had lunch and hit the road. We made on stop in Punakaiki before we found a place to sleep. In Punakaiki there is nothing to do; it is just a tourist information across the road from their only cool attraction, the 'pancake rocks'. There were quite a few ridiculous signs describing how these rocks were formed that as far as I understood were pure waffle and contained only two key parts, compression of sea matter and erosion.


It was cool though, listening to the deep bellows of the waves crashing into small caverns and watching the water rise and fall perhaps 3 meters with every wave from precarious points that will definitely not be here in twenty years.


We made camp on a cliff top right above a rocky beach. That hit our criteria, because we guessed that there would be fewer sandflies. Katherine pulled out cous-cous and lamb and we enjoyed the sunset. The sunset at times completely looked like a rainbow covering the sky from deep red to violet, I'll remember the green.

Aside: Our sandfly bites were driving us both potty all day. The mossie net mesh holes are just big enough for a medium sized sand fly to squeeze through. Hands and feet were the targeted areas.


February 6th


We woke by the sea, to the sound of an especially big wave crashing on the jagged rocks below. We slowly meandered the 3 meters to mission control and just kept on trucking. After 1 hour, we stopped for breakkie by a single lane bridge, which I do feel that when the van travels through at a good pace makes it breathe in because they can be tighter than you think. Anyway, while we ate there were quite a few cyclists cruising by. I was following one down a hill doing easily 60 km/h, it was a windy small mountain road with massive drops on one side. I thought he didn't stand a chance if anything goes wrong, but, it would be a mad adrenaline rush.


A little bit further down the road we stopped in Berlins because we wanted coffee. The car park at the cafe was full to the brims with massive old-school live-in buses and we had bumped into a country music festival. It wasn't very big, about the size of a standard pub garden. We looked around and the both of us had hugely lowered the average age. It was filled with toe-tapping, cowboy outfit wearing and drinking hill-billie-traveling type folk all mashing it in their own way. They were only offering instant coffee but we'd been having enough of that in Edna and were looking for the upgrade.


So, it was back on the road. Next stop was Mapua. We stopped for the touch aquarium where 'if it's open you can touch it'. Neither of us touched a massive eel for obvious reasons but we did play with soft-leathery baby sharks that were swimming with slimy blobs that were mostly resting on their fins and some tiddlers of fish, which no matter how hard to try and touch you could never even get a passing tail wag, to make the numbers up. The stingray was lonely and a couple of young'uns told us how to entice it up to the surface and it was well slimy.


Then it was a short drive to Marahau in the Abel Tasman National Park. We parked up and promptly made an amazing bangers, mash, beans and, gluttonously, onion gravy supper and crashed.

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Photos

Open kitchen
at the four star and moon hotel

sunset view
(no rendering)