Arthur's Pass

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We wake up and a storm is moving in. By the time we get showered and dressed it is raining pretty hard. We have breakfast and go to the DOC center where we spend a lot of time learning about Arthur’s Pass. The DOC guy tells us about some day hikes that could be made in wet weather.
The DOC center also serves as the Arthur’s Pass museum. In 1865, gold was discovered on the west coast so a road was built through Arthur’s Pass by 1866 to serve the stagecoaches making the alpine crossing. The trip took 36 hours, divided in 12 hour days. It was not an easy trip. The railroad tunnel took 15 years to build and was finally completed in 1923, thus ending the stagecoach service. Arthur’s Pass now has a population of 50, most of which live in the old tunnel worker’s cabins.
We go to eat lunch at the only restaurant in town and decide that it is raining too hard to hike until it clears some. It is different hiking out of the Abel Tasman Track in the rain than taking a two-hour day walk in the rain.
We get on the pay phone and make reservations for a motel in Christchurch starting on Sunday and go back to our room to look at our options when we get to Queenstown. My friend Lisa and her son, Ryan are coming to join us in Queenstown for a week at the end of November and we want to show them the best of NZ.
The rain doesn’t clear all afternoon but should start clearing tomorrow so we decide we will take some short hikes tomorrow and take a longer hike up to the mountain ridge on Saturday.
We go to the Wobbly Kea (where else?) for dinner and have another excellent meal. This time they have three Australian musicians that come in to play. They are like a folk trio playing guitars, wooden flutes and some kind of maraca looking things. We were tired and they weren’t that interesting so we leave and go to bed.

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