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| Greymouth Beach |
Today we did a
final lap around Greymouth, our thoughts are that it is a hard working town, clean and pleasant, but a little dated, and certainly not a tourist magnet, but that’s part of its charm. We also checked out the town’s beach, a sea of granite pebbles of all shapes and sizes. The final surprise was that the Van Park was located at the end of the Greymouth airport’s runway.
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| On the way to Arthur's Pass |
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| Wide Valleys on the way to Arthur's Pass |
We headed off out of Greymouth towards
Arthur’s Pass about mid morning, a little later than we would have liked. The road inland towards the mountains, was typical of what we have learned to expect in New Zealand, very beautiful, narrow and winding. The road passed wide valleys with slow moving wide rivers across narrow one lane bridges. The rivers are very different to explosive narrow rivers to south west or over Alpine valleys near Queenstown or Wanaka.
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| Arthur's Pass Kea |
We had some minor drama when we had our petrol gauge flash near empty up a steep incline, but then returned to between half and quarter of tank on the level part of the road. At Arthur’s Pass we filled up at the single pump at the local store. Cos had to surrender his driver’s license to get the petrol pump turned on, apparently the operators can’t see the pump and have had more than a few dishonest folks make off with full tanks without paying. While Cos pumped fuel, the girls and Melissa were greeted by the
local variety of parrot called a Kea. The Kea is famous for eating rubber accessories and ‘pretty bits’ off cars, and raiding picnic baskets even apparently opening zippers. So Melissa and the girls kept the very friendly Keas away from our hire car because given the amount rain NZ gets we might just need the windscreen wipers over the next couple of days. They are apparently very clever and I believe understand. I was taking some pictures of one and hoping for some action as they have beautiful red on their tail and under their wings which is generally hidden. I asked to show me your wings talking to it and instantly he lifted his wing and then the other as if to say ‘this what you want’ Arthur’s pass is mid way to Christchurch, and a pleasant resting place for travelers, so we spent half an hour taking in the sights.
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| Past Arthur's Pass |
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| Alps beyond the Pass |
We headed down the mountains; the eastern side we discovered seemed more barren than other ranges we have seen. One can see why they used some of scenery for “the land of Rohan” in the movie “Lord of Rings”, as it was sheer rock formations surrounded by brown and grey windswept foot hills. The road down was definitely not as steep as coming up.
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| Looking back outside Springfield |
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We continued on passing through a few little towns. One, called Springfield, boasted homemade pies so we stopped and had another round of yummy pies for lunch. We once again drove on for our last driving leg of our holiday with return date tomorrow for our car.
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| Blue Penguin |
As we approached
Christchurch we checked the map for the route to the Randolph. We discovered that our route took us passed the airport and a destination we wanted to visit,
The Antarctic Centre. So we made our visit. It was a spectacular place and thoroughly recommend a visit. Inside is a great insight to Antarctica, it history, geography and all you want to know. In Oarmaru we saw the Blue Penguins but were unable to photograph them. We just caught a feeding time here and were able to take pictures which was great. This ones here are not wild as in Oamaru but most are refugees that have been rescued, orphaned or wounded by sea debris, rubbish, cars, people or other animals. The highlight of the visit was a ride in a Hagglund which is an all terrain vehicle that is used in Antarctic to move people around in the harsh undulating environment. Most of the time it was maneuvering on two tracks but at one stage were semi submerged in 3m of water, using paddles to move and steer through the water. We all thought it was a bumpy and rough but awesome ride. Another highlight was experiencing an Arctic Storm. We rugged up and entered a room that was at a calm -8. Every half an hour they subject those that are game to 42km/hr wind and a -18 degree wind chill. Boy was it cold thank goodness it only lasted about 5 minutes. We certainly did not give this wonderful display the time it deserved.
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| ATVs at the Arctic Centre |
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| Building behind the Randolph |
We left the Centre and headed to our accommodation,
The Randolph. It was quite close only about 10mins towards the city. Comforting thought when we are getting back to the airport at 4am 5/10 so will probably be even a little quicker. The accommodation is very pleasant, certainly more up market to what we are used to in Top 10 Holiday Parks but we pre-booked and figured we would be looking for a little more luxury. After tea, as it was still light we went for a walk up the street towards an up-market shopping area. It is obviously an older part of town as there were mix different vintage style buildings. Most of the homes were built in mock Tudor style which was popular second half of last century. There is also some evidence of earthquake damage with a church with the steeple removed and grounded and brickwork rubble on the ground. There was also some evidence of shops still being repaired from damage.
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