Rain, Caves & Pancakes

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After Lake Wanaka we moved onto Franz Josef where the glaciers are. The drive there was one of the longest and yet again one of the most scenic. This time driving through temperate rainforest through gorges and along huge river beds. Once you hit the wind battered west coast the rainforest takes on a very 'haunted wood look'. It was on this journey we very nearly got stuck for fuel because of the big distances between places and there are not many towns along this way and the petrol stations are not always open.The idea of going to Franz Josef was to go up one of the glaciers by helicopter however it was chucking it down with rain the whole time we were there so we weren't able to.

We drove on to Greymouth via a place called Hokitika. This place was quite interesting with a really cool beach. Because a lot of the rivers wash down fallen trees from the rainforest the beach is full of the dead tree wood which some people have used to make 'Arty' stuff. Also its the place for greenstone which they use a lot of to make jewelry here. We were finding large chunks of all over the beach. Greymouth is a small town with pretty much sod all there. We drove a bit further on to Pancake rocks which are these interesting eroded rock formations. During high tide there is a blow hole here as well. We decided to try something called 'black water rafting' while in Greymouth. However this is really just caving with a little bit of sitting on rubber rings looking at glow worms. The glow worms were the best bit but the rest was a bit of a nightmare. We had to traipse for half an hour through the forest wearing wetsuits. Then go through this cave with a river running through for another half hour before the glow worm section. Then we crawled through a really narrow set of tunnels which were just that bit too claustrophobic but we did it. And we'll never do it again. We then traipsed all the way back through the forest with 'wet' wet suits. Thankfully the tour company had a hot tub at the end with beer and muffins.

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Photos

Hokitika Beach
That's Jason there in the O- ring