Driving the West Coast of the South Island

Thursday morning we left beautiful sunny Wanaka and headed for the mountain pass to bring us to the west coast of the South Island. We could see the clouds stacking up against the western side of the mountains but were committed to our plan. We drove along Lake Hawea (a sister lake to Lake Wanaka) towards Haast Pass. Once again we were winding our way along mountainsides over streams and rivers on a narrow, serpentine road. The clouds settled around us and the rains began. We knew we were surrounded by mountains but we couldn’t see them. Instead, we were awed by dense ferns that tenaciously clung to the cliffs along the highway as we drove through cloud topped fern tunnels. During the course of the day we drove over dozens of one-lane bridges. We even drove an extra long one-way bridge that had two passing bays! From the top of Haast Pass we descended rapidly and steeply to the coast of the Tasman Sea and brief sunshine. We ate our picnic lunch (in the car due to sandflies!) along the beach and viewed a mile or so of whimsical driftwood and rock creations.

Continuing north along the coast, we were bound for the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers which are located in the Mt. Cook National Park. (Interestingly, to see Mt. Cook up close one needs to approach from the eastern side of the island as there is no road from the west coast.) Most people driving the west coast come from the north to the south. Consequently, the first turnoff we encountered for Fox Glacier was not the main entrance although we didn’t know that at the time. We drove in on a rough road, stopping on the way in at a little pullout for a view of the glacier. Long story short, we had an amazing walk in a steady rain through a temperate rain forest to the chalky colored river and a distant view of the cloud topped glacier. As Mark said, “Jurassic Park meets Ice Age in a half mile walk.” We stopped for an afternoon snack and noticed a sign proclaiming that we were now in southern Westland and we knew that we had just left northern Southland. Gets a wee bit confusing at times!

We drove another 10 k (6 miles) to see the Franz Josef Glacier. Kiwis are quite pleased because in the past few years the glaciers have been advancing again instead of receding. Here we accessed the main entrance and took a short hike to a viewing area for the glacier. The clouds were still low but we did see the glacier and were treated to a double rainbow stretching across the valley. Rain brings its own treasures even though we were sad to not have mountain vistas along the way.

Our final push of the 240 some miles we traveled on Thursday (in nine hours!) was to the small coastal town of Hokitika, south of Greymouth. We had picked up a couple of meat pies (very popular in NZ) in the town of Franz Josef and happily checked into our hotel complete with frig and microwave (lots of hotels have small kitchenettes here) and made a very nice dinner for ourselves with our other odds and ends of food we had leftover. After dinner, we took the small lantern that our hotel host had given us and walked up the highway a block or so to the local Glowworm Dell.

Glowworms are big stuff in NZ--both islands. There are all sorts of pricey tours that one can take to see the glowworms. They are not really worms but are larvae of a kind of gnat. Like fireflies they phosphoresce, however, they are stationary and just glow to attract food. Regardless, the little dell was aglow--like looking at a starry night on a wall. We giggled because we went boldly and noisily into the dell only to discover lots of silent people there in the dark. We quickly doused the light and started whispering as we tried to find each other again.  The next morning we stopped by the dell to see it in daylight. It was just a high walled area with lots of vegetation. We may yet have to pay to visit one of the big caves that boast thousands of glow worms….