Wild West Tuesday 1/22/08

Today a cyclone (not a term I would have recognized) moved across the country for the first time in ten years. The result for us was a very rainy, foggy day for our longest drive of the trip so far. Our departure from Nelson was held up when our credit card wouldn’t work. With the help of Donna, our hostess, we made the overseas collect call where we had to answer a bunch of automated questions and were finally connected with a customer service person in Mumbai. The end result was that our account had never been accessed and the problem was with the system on this end. One more rerun with the card and we were off and running.

It was really windy for us but nothing like just across the strait where southern North Island winds were over 140 km/h. The rain was alternating between a mist and a horizontal downpour with fog reaching most of the way to the ground. We hugged the Buller river in what we can only imagine is a beautiful drive down to Westport where we stopped for lunch at a local pub/café. John had another of those egg/bacon/tomato/lettuce/onion/beet burgers and Mary stepped out of the box with Souvlaki.

The good news is that about 40km south of Westport at Punakaiki is a formation called Pancake Rocks which features spectacular blow holes that are best viewed when the weather is the worst. Perfect. We bundled in all of our rain gear and marched 10 minutes through the driving rain to the cliffs above the angry Tasman Sea to see some interesting rocks but no blow holes. No problem. We follow the path a little farther to a surge pool where the water is crashing in between a small opening to the sea—now we’re getting somewhere. Rain is now inside of our hoodies and running down our necks but we head to the next viewing area—nothin’. Walk, wetter, wetter, walk, pounding waves, roaring wind, driving rain, wetter, and no blow holes. We’re out of path and we head back drenched as Mary said, "those rocks were interesting." We asked the conservation fellow in the info center, "Hey hey hey, what’s the deal with your stupid ocean?" (Not what we said, but probably what he heard.) He said the blow holes need high tide, wind out of the west, and big swells. All we had today were big swells and, oh yeah, driving rain.

We stop for more breakfast fruits in Greymouth and decide we can get to Hokitika for gas. Unfortunately, all of the power is out in Hokitika and the fellow at the gas station said it would only be 5 minutes. It is now after 3:00 and we have three hours to go so after waiting 15 minutes we decide to keep going. Our low gas light comes on with about 35 miles to go and we haven’t had many viable gas options for a couple hours. We finally find a little joint about 10 miles short of our destination where gas is $2.02/liter (We have been paying $1.70) so we throw in 20 bucks worth and feel better about not having to walk. We get to Franz Josef and check into our cottage at about 6:15 so we are safe and now dry.

As miserable as the day was, the drive through river valleys and along oceanside cliffs with views of the southern alps was certainly spectacular at times and we can only imagine what it might be like on a perfect day. Unfortunately we can’t just pop back next week or wait out the weather. We have places to be and things to do so have to keep moving. We have a date with glaciers on Wednesday.

The village of Franz Josef was sleepy last night and our hostess at the Blue Ice Restaurant let us order off the bar menu so it was pizza and wine. A couple folks came in after us and wanted to know how to get one of those pizzas. Thanks to our bad example, a very nice restaurant became a pizza joint. We promised to come back on Wednesday night to order real food.

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