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Published: April 19th 2008
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After our wonderful stay by the river we woke early and got back on the road looking for somewhere to settle to do some NZ tramping. Now I will forgive anyone who thought the title of this blog is in reference to our current living status, although I look at some of the photos and I think christ what happened to the woman in designer gear and high heels???? She is still secretly there and she visits occasionally to pine over shoe shops!! However tramping is NZ equivalent to hiking and for that I obviously have my infinitely sexy boots. We drove through the cold early morning and stopped in a town called Reefton which was very pleasant and quaint. It is also the first place to get street lighting in New Zealand in 1888 due to the gold rush. They are very proud of this and although we did not know about it before we stopped here it it highly documented in the village. The street is adorned with traditional street lighting which is quite shabby and I had to stop myself berating the local council about how much more effort they could have made I bet most people dont
Sunning himself
His little friends are all blacks rugby models he got free with fuel!!!!!!!! even look at it!!!!!! Reefton is the beginning of Lewis Pass the main route through the southern alps.
From here we drove into Greymouth which is one of the larger towns on the west coast the scenery is endless and the roads extremely winding. Tim is doing most of the driving which I am happy to let him do as the van is quite large. Greymouth has a quaint main street but did not really hit us as a place we wanted to base camp at. We did however go into the tourist info and they armed us with a guide to conservation camps which are much cheaper than the main campgrounds. They are not full of facilities mainly only offering toilets but the areas are of good interest alot of the time for walks. They also gave us walking maps for the surrounding areas. After a look through we settled on trying to find a place called Goldsborough which had a conservation campground and good walking opportunities. It was only around 30 minutes drive from Greymouth and when we got there we immediately fell in love with the place. The campgrounds we lovingly kept. Each site had high
I am the fire starter
actually the bracken burnt pretty well but not much else!!!!! trees so you had a great deal of privacy from either side and it was very quiet. The site ran on an honesty system where you filled in a small docket and then paid your money in an envelope which you posted in a small box. That done we settled in and enjoyed the last hour of sunshine. The camp we pitched on had a fire grate that can be used for BBq's we decided to just use it to keep warm and searched for logs and bracken to get it going. Once the sun goes in it gets pretty damn cold and it wasn't until the following night when we didn't build a fire that we realised how warm it kept us!!! Anyway the next morning we set off on the goldsborough track which is a 4 hour one way hike through the surrounding hills. Historically a gold rush town the area has lots of mining history to explore and you can still pan the river if you want to. Tramping in jeans isn't comfortable so my combats that I hate had to make an outing and I did winge for a few minutes about it. We had devoured
a good english breakfast cooked by moi and a picnic lunch. We figured from the info that we would be walking around 6-7 hours as we were planning to walk the full track and then complete the circle by coming back via the roads. the waling guides advises you to arrange return transport but how you are supposed to do that was beyond us as there is no-one there!!! Any way we headed out and after the first half hour of very steep climbing I did start to wonder if it was a wise idea. Stripping off our layers we had wrapped in we made ourselves more comfortable and both found it very enjoyable. Although there were not a huge amount of scenic opportunities as we were mostly walking in dense forest over streams and waterfalls it was good to be out in the fresh air and getting some exercise. We relied heavily on small orange arrows that lead the way through the trees and up and down hills. There is no way we would have done this in the rainforest's in OZ. Fan tailed birds followed us along the way picking off the insects we stirred up but other
than them we came across little wildlife which suited me!!! We stopped for our lunch around 2.5 hours in thinking that we had over another hour to walk to the end of the track and then back by the roads. As it turned out another 30 minutes walking brought us to a clearing which was very picturesque with mossy green ground and trees overhanging it. This path took us to th end of the track and out onto the road we had only been walking for around 3 hours at this point. Following the roads back the way the map had shown them we found ourselves back at the camp after four and a half hours and pleasantly tired. The afternoon sun was still shining and the day so far had been surprisingly warm. As the camp was very quiet and our area well secluded we took the opportunity of boiling heaps of water and having a good stripped wash. Showers would have been nicer for sure but you get by with what you can and it was worth it not to be cramped on an official site. Our only visitors were some rather friendly and scavenging birds which we
had seen hanging around when we had been cooking. They had ran off with an escaped mushroom but other than that and checking out the fire they had been okay. However as Tim dried after his wash and I sat brushing my hair the little buggers ran off with our soap. It was really funny actually as it came out of the bushes with it all round his mouth but not looking over pleased. Good job we had some more!!!! We stayed here another night and after our days activities enjoyed a good nights sleep even though it was quit cold. With no power we could not use our radiator and the nights were certainly getting colder.
The next morning we took a short walk near the site called the tunnel terrace that took us through the old mining tunnels which was quite interesting is a little claustrophobic to start with. We then headed to Hokitika which was on our route to see what was there and try and find an internet cafe to get some updates done. It was a small town by the seaside but it was a cold day and neither of us really felt like walking around. We stopped at an internet cafe Tim had to sort out our budget update and me the blog. All went well for the first hour and I was piling through the photo uploads, then it all went sour and the computer crashed. I moved to another and that didn't want to play and I left in a foul mood with no publishes done. Internet cafes are great when they work but damn frustrating when they dont. We left the computer stuff and went to stock up on food. As Hokitika didn't really entice us to stay we left to travel down to the Franz Josef Glacier. Once again the roads we travelled provided beautiful scenery, the south island is without doubt an amazing place to visit...................
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