Not quite committed to adulthood: The West Coast

We are about to embark on one of the top 10 drives in the World - the West Coast of the NZ South Island - whoop! But first...

...we get a flat tyre. bollocks.

Driving from the Nelson Lakes which are gorgeous but sandfly hell and home to the world's cheekiest ducks ( they stole my lunch off my plate then sent the word out to all the other ducks that bread was on the menu for lunch creating a swarm of hungry ducks - mother duckers) we are driving relatively slowly over to Westport and enjoying the beautiful drive as tourists should.

Swarm of ducks

Soon I had a car or two stuck behind me, and despite this being the 'main road' it is only one lane and winding around a mountain so is impossible to pass on, so I pull over onto a 'mildly' rocky siding (at about 70kmph). The tyres clearly didn't like that. Now in my defence only the bottom of the tyre was flat.... Our first reaction was AA, then we remembered our phone had broken, so I did the first thing instinct told me. I flagged down a passing car in the hope there was a man in it who could fix my wheel...yeah yeah I know... So the nice lady that stopped helpfully pointed out that we were probably carrying a spare and should just change that over and drive to the nearest town. (I swear that would have been my second instinctive reaction!) I had a nice little chat to the lady whilst Duncan jacked up the car and changed the wheel - turns out I was carrying my own spare man too! Slowlyish we head to Westport for the evening...and what an evening!

Spare tyre in place, front left!

Having seen the sand dance on the beach (it was windy and like watching a ghost river flowing away) we thought the next best thing to do in a sleepy town is to find a bar. The local bar turns out to be a proper local bar and most of the punters look a little like hell's angels. Awesome. I position us with 2 handles close to the action and we soon get a steady stream of locals interested in the 'newbies' tellling us stories of the local area, the mines in which most of them work or the local farms, whitebait fishing, the local affliction to weed (this explains the guy walking around looking a lot like a stoned Jesus) and a fair few debates as most of them appear to be Chelsea or Liverpool fans...grrrr.

Awesome 'dancing sand' beach

So apart from a clear lack of taste in football we enjoy a bit of banter with the guys and before long we get asked if we would like to have a ride on the armchair… I don’t know what this is but I am sure this is something I want to do, as long as Duncan goes first! We head outside and it turns out one of the guys has turned a regular armchair into a go-kart. That’s right. It has wheels, an engine that does 40mph and a little wheel, and no brakes. Duncan heads off up the road first and then it is my turn… with a minor warning about going steady on the accelerator I head off up the footpath and onto the road at what I thought was a steady speed. Well the chain comes off the motor and the guy has to come rescue me halfway up the road and says I need to go a tad slower, which they all find hilarious! Girl Racer? Moi? Haha! A few beers later we are invited to spend the next morning with a farmer milking cows and a fisherman catching whitebait, all we have to do is be up at 6:30am…

Getting ready to ride

No really - we were driving an armchair down the road

….6:30am we are picked up by the farmer guy from the campsite and taken to his dairy farm. He has about 200 dairy cows and they are about halfway through milking. And we are invited to help milk the rest. I am so sorry I haven’t got any pictures of this because it is brilliant! The cows line up on either side with a pit in the middle. This pit is where the ‘milkers’ stand, and the cows arses are facing inwards to the pit (so their udders are closer for milking)…get the picture? So down we go at which point the farmer warns us that we are new and cows can detect strangers and as a result can be scared and basically ‘sh*t themselves’ Now I have been on farms since I was born as my granddad was a dairy farmer and knew what would happen so got stuck in with helping. Duncan on the other hand hasn’t and told me to ‘be careful so I didn’t get cow crap on his arm’ to which I pointed out his back was already covered – hahahaha. We only had one very near miss though when Duncan put his hand under the cow to milk it and the cow started to raise it’s tail… Duncan got out just in time! Today all turned out to be ‘cow insemination day’ so we had a little talk on how they choose the bulls and the new breed of kiwi cows. We call them summer cows… ‘cause summer brown, summer white and summer black. They are just Jersey and Friesian crosses basically – to render could health and milk quantity see. Then it was the cows turn to look scared, the ‘inseminator’ arrived and I wonder how on earth anyone gets into that line of work! It was beautiful viewing though – the guy gets a tube, puts the frozen sperm in it, slicks his hand with lube and up it goes. The cows eyes went as wide as mine! The nice farmer then takes us to the river to meet the fishermen (The New Zealander’s are so super friendly) these guys told us ho Whitebait is hugely popular and expensive in NZ and about the competition in the area to get great spots to fish (they get there at 3:30am to secure a spot!). Mind you they can make between $1,000 and $2,000 a day in the best spots during the season! We didn’t get to catch anything sadly as the season is now kind of over but he caught a few tiddlers just to show us what they looked like – erm tiny see-through fish. Weird. Sadly we have to leave and head into town to find a new tyre.

With the car back on the road we drive over to Greymouth for another night’s camp. On the way we stop for an awesome walk up the Truman Track which leads to the sea which was pretty ferocious the day we visited. The waves were smashing up against the rocks and going meters up the beach before being dragged back down to the swirling white ocean. We managed to skirt just around the surf to see some of the cool caves and overhangs the sea has created from being so vicious.

We also stopped at Pancake Rocks which is a huge stop off point for tourists. We weren’t really that impressed though – seems like a lot of hype. The rocks are layered on top of each other (like pancake stacks) due to the erosion of rocks and soil over the years. The blow holes that have been created by the sea are quite cool though but the pictures we took don’t really show that so I’ll just leave it for there for today!

On the way out of Greymouth going towards Franz Joseph Glacier we stop at an attraction called ‘Shanty Town’. This area had a huge gold mining community back in the day and a few of the old buildings still remain. Others have bee reconstructed to create an old town, along with lots of antiques from around the time, some history as well as the opportunity to have photos taken in costume or with those board things (see below) and also gold panning to see if we can find any gold ourselves. Sadly all these extras actually cost more money after we have paid quite a bit to get into the attraction so we just do a few board photos, a walk up to the viewing point and a steam train ride to the old saw mill. The history on the area is really good to read about and the town is very pretty but I would have liked to have a chance to do the gold panning as part of the admission price.

All aboard the traditional steamtrain

Shanty Town

close the door!

Oh well. Onto Franz Joseph and to see Jon and Flick again for a yummy dinner of half chicken, cranberry and brie and half cajun spicy chicken pizza and a huge plate of ribs for Duncan! Food makes us happy – what can I say!

The next few nights we camp in the shadow of the mountains covered in snow, which is pretty amazing. We have to wait a day to do the Franz Joseph Glacier walk as it is fully-booked (the first time that has happened since we arrived – the cheek of it!) but it turns out for the best as the following day it is peeing it down all day! We take this opportunity to relax at the campsite, read, and wash our cow crap clothes. I have to admit that this day we did not leave the campsite once yet I still spent the day driving… I didn’t want to get wet so drove around the campsite! Tent to bathroom, bathroom to laundry, laundry to internet, internet to kitchen, kitchen to lounge, lounge to tent. Little bit lazy?!

Camping under a snowy mountain - awesome (and cold)

The next day luckily shines bright and we are up bright and early to join our group for a day long walk on the Franz Joseph Glacier. I am a tad nervous as we get kitted up in fleeces, waterproofs, boots, socks, hats, gloves and crampons as I’m not a fast uphill walker but luckily the group splits into 3 – fast, medium and slow – erm SLOW please! The first groups heads off and mainly climbs the glacier using little toe-holds, speeding ahead, the second group then follows making steps in the ice, our group follows slowly behind climbing the pre-made steps. Sweet as! Before lunch we are mainly just walking up crushed ice, which looks like what I imagine a mountain of Mr. Frosty ice would look like if you were walking up it in a dream, suddenly I start to crave a cocktail served over crushed ice! After lunch we get into the really awesome ice – crevices, caves, valleys – and the ice is really beautifully blue – it really is striking. The pictures really show this more than anything I can say! And even better the walk wasn’t that difficult, Duncan’s fear of needing the loo halfway up didn’t occur and we had a really fabulous day.