Whizzing down the west coast

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Leaving Punakaiki behind us we continued south down the coast road, through Barrytown and past 17,14 and 12 mile bluff, Motukiekie Rocks and onto Greymouth. After a brief shop and visit to the seafront we turned inland following the Grey River for a while and then south again along the Lake Brunner road to overnight near the Arnold River Scenic Reserve.

The next morning we backtracked to visit the famous town of Blackball and nearby Roa. Blackball is an old gold mining settlement that later changed to digging up coal which is still mined in the area today. As well as the underground workings some of which we got to see, large mechanized dredgers plied the Grey River sieving through the riverbed. The town is famous for 7 men striking which forced an increase in the amount of break time that miners received from 15 to 30 minutes and kick started the unions in the country. We followed 6km of winding gravel track up to the start of the Croesus Track that crosses back to the west coast, but feeling lazy decided not to walk any of it and headed back to Greymouth and the coast road again.

Heading south with the Southern Alps getting larger all the time we stopped for the night by a beach halfway between Greymouth and Hokitika, near Kumara Junction at the mouth of the Taramakau River. The view was perfect and a great place for free camping, a fact confirmed by the arrival of a couple of other campervans and a car. Waking the next morning it was pretty nippy in our campervan, but we had it easy compared with the two girls we found in their sleeping bags by their car looking very cold! One of them was a local and had decided to show a visiting friend her favourite camp spot….I don’t think she’ll forget it! Anyway they enjoyed a nice cup of tea supplied by the local Pom’s!

Moving further south we crossed some interesting single lane bridges, one in particular that combined two-way road traffic and the train line - I remember crossing that one with some apprehension on my bike! After a short day on the road we stopped at Hokitika for the luxury of a campsite and a hot shower. In town we finalized our Galapagos trip and struggled to work out how to get the money to Ecuador. In the days of electronic banking it is amazingly difficult to wire money around the world if you aren’t in your home country. Even if we walked into a bank with the cash, they couldn’t transfer it because of money laundering rules. International transfers from our internet banking weren’t possible yet and the option of sending the money by post in brown envelopes didn’t appeal, so we ended up getting my parents to pay for it themselves and transferring the money to them.

Leaving Hoki the following morning we continued our journey south heading for Franz Josef and the start of glacier country, stopping at Mahinapua Lake for far too many reflection photos and a quick visit to Ross, another historic gold mine site. Arriving at Franz Josef we poured over the options for scenic helicopter flights over the glaciers, but eventually decided to make do with a drive to the bottom of one and having a look from there. Our other aim was to walk up the Copeland track a little further south and after checking the weather and getting information about track conditions from the visitors centre, we got out of town driving past Fox, the other famous west coast glacier and then another 25km’s further stopping for the night near the start of the Copeland track ready for an early start the next day.

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