West Coast Massive

As I mentioned in the last post, we had heard that the weather in the south island would be worse than in the north, with more rain and much, much colder. So it was a pleasant surprise to slide open the side door and have my face greeted by warm sunshine. There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky either; what a great start to the day! And we hadn’t even been woken by the traffic buzzing past in the night or the morning. We were to be heading west, following a river valley to get towards Greymouth. There was no real reason to go to Greymouth but we needed to get some miles under our belt if we were to get all the way down to Milford Sound and back to Christchurch in time for our flight to Australia.

I’m going to have another go at the map we have as it lists the time taken to get between certain places, but they are very much hit and miss. A relatively short journey took us ages and the progress along the river valley (along the River Grey coincidentally) was disappointingly slow. We did go through some amazing scenery though, and nearly had the opportunity to stop and explore a disused gold mine but we missed the turning. Again, a signpost wouldn’t go amiss. We carried on along the river until we arrived in Greymouth. And it was pretty much a one horse town. Saying that, they probably didn’t even have a horse. They had plenty of things for people that lived there (mechanics, book stores, eateries) but nothing really for the tourists. The “highlight” was when we walked along the Great Wall of Greymouth (a flood barrier built to protect the town, which was about a meter high) ad down into town where we found a skate park with a bunch of youths having out. They hollered out asking if we were having a good day and we replied that we were. James then shouted back, “where’s the place to be in Greymouth?” to which they responded, “here”. The fact that we were in our thirties and had no skateboard meant that it more than likely wasn’t the place to be, for us at least. With nothing left for us in Greymouth we clambered back in to the campervan and drove out of town. We had spotted a good (cheap) campsite along the coast at Hokitika, so that would be our final destination for the day.

Hokitika clock tower

We entered Hokitika well before 4pm, which would give us time to see the village and have a look round before we checked in to the holiday park. The first thing we just had to go and see was the Glow-worm Dell, but there wasn’t really anything to see. They don’t come out in daylight and we couldn’t be fussed to come back at night, so we chalked it down to experience and went on our merry way. We were nearly forced round the museum, before almost seeing the one and only Kiwi at The National Kiwi Center, but for $18.50 it was a little too steep for our liking. The beach was interesting though, with waves crashing on the shore and black sand as far as the eye could see. I had never been on a black-sand beach before and it just seemed plain weird. I tried hunting for a piece of natural greenstone/jade that may have been washed up on the beach, but all I found was a green ear plug. I didn’t take it.

Black sand? OK then!

The campsite was cheap but with good facilities. It may have been cheap because the woman running it was a bit odd, or it may have been that the camp was next to the milk processing plant. Either way it did the job.