West Coast journey

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Leaving Nelson we had a long day on the bus, heading down to Greymouth. The road winds through the Buller Gorge before reaching the wild west coast. It's a fabulous journey through rainforest and past wave-swept beaches. We made a few scenic stops en route, at Tauranga bay to see a seal colony, then a walk along the Truman Track, down through the rainforest to the ocean, and later a stop at Punakaiki to see the famous pancake rocks. Photos of all attached....... I'd already decided by the time we arrived in Greymouth that I had to come back and see some more of this part of South Island. The bus is a great way to travel for lots of reasons, but the biggest downside is the feeling that you are just skimming past all this beautiful scenery without really seeing it properly. The bus this day was a pretty sociable one though, so that evening a group of us headed down to the classic backpackers 'all you can eat' BBQ at a local pub. I may have mentioned this already, but sausages in NZ are not up to scratch, and these were no exception. But for $8 (about 3 pounds!) noone was complaining too much. It felt like being a student again. Greymouth is the kind of place you only stay for a night - it does have a brewery though, Monteith's, which are the best beers I've tasted in NZ so far. After you've tried a few of those it doesn't really matter where you are :-)
The next morning we carried on down the coast to the Franz Josef glacier. I'd booked to do a heli hike that afternoon, but it was cancelled because the cloud was too low - a common occurrence here, where the annual rainfall is 7 metres! I rebooked for the next day, and woke up to a perfect blue sky - I had to wait until lunchtime before the flight, but the weather held and I had my first ever helicopter flight, swooping up and over the glacier before landing high up on a level section of ice. We had a couple of hours hiking across the ice, following in the footsteps of our guide, who would hack steps into the ice with his axe if it got too steep. It was an amazing experience which felt almost unreal - I found it hard to grasp the sheer scale of what I was surrounded by. South Island just keeps getting better!!

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Photos

The magic bus
just so you can see how I've been travelling the country

Franz Josef glacier
view from the helicopter on the way up...