Psycho

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After leaving the glacier I wanted to travel up to the Abel Tasmin national park which is on the north coast. As previously mentioned there are very few petrol stations on the west coast and I didn't think to fill up in Franz Joseph. Consequently at about 5pm I reached the Pancake Rocks area (can't remember the village name) and reallised I was running very low on petrol. I stopped at the visitor centre and asked where the nearest petrol station was. 56km in the direction I was going in, or 48km back the way I came.

They did say that if I stayed the night in the village, the cafe would sell me 5 litres from a can when it opened in the morning, so I went and found a motel up the road. Once checked in I went down to look at the rocks. They are made up of hundreds of layers of limestone, which makes them look like a stack of pancakes. There are also blowholes in the rocks, but the tide was too far out for them to be blowing.

I got back to the motel as it was getting dark and suddenly realised how similar it was to the motel in the Hitchcock film "Psycho". Even the owner's house was up a hill behind the units. I wasn't too worried until a bit later when I realised I was the only person staying there. Didn't sleep well that night, due to the amount of weirdo's trying to get into my room.... or it may have been the wind in the trees... not sure.

Next morning I waited for ages for the cafe to open and then gave up and decided to risk trying to reach the next town. Thanks to some VERY light-footed driving (I can do it sometimes), I made it - running on petrol fumes by the end.

Photo's to follow...

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