Day 9'er - The West Coast

The west coast is wet. Soaking wet in fact. As discussed in the last update this area of the world get pounded by rain. And we found that out first hand. I rained in showers all day long, mostly only 15 minutes between hour long showers. Still it is the wet coast so one should expect it, that didn't stop us from checking out the sites.

We set out in the morning to Franz Joseph Glacier. It was pissing rain and a 1.5 hr walk into the glacier, common sense kick in and we left. The highlight of that town was a toss up, the pleasantly surprising public loo (think talking Japanese style can) or the bird flying into Andi's hair and the resulting freak out.

The next place on the road to discovery was the Fox Glacier. A 20 minute walk from the car park and it had stopped raining - for a minute. We made a mad dash for a good viewing spot, but not surprisingly we got smashed by heaven water again. We both got soaked, but in my opinion it was worth it to see a very unique glacier. It is unique due to the surrounding geography. The rain forest lines the confines of the glacial valley. The result, ice and rain forest directly beside each other, the only other place on earth similar is in Argentina. I nerded and Andi got educated, in know she didn't care and she probably hasn't forgiving me yet. Here we are soaked.




From here it was another dash along the rugged coastline and then inland and up over the Haast Pass to the calming plateaus near Wanaka and Queenstown. The Haast Pass was basically waterfall alley. Big amounts of water seemed to be streaming off the hills at every glance. We stopped at several of them because we could. Please consult the slide show for names and photos. The valley narrowed, the road got steeper and the gorge beside us deepened. It all made for a super sweet drive through the mountains. Certainly our favorite so far. The last waterfall we stopped at was called Fantail falls. When we got to the riverbank we were greeted with hundreds of rock cairns. Truly a delight after seeing so many waterfalls (you do tend to get bored with them). We made a couple to help keep the bank tallies up.


Twenty minutes later we were up on the high plateau under a shinning sun, which was very welcome in our opinion. A quick drive past lake Wanaka put us into the town of Wanaka for the night.
A quick window shop and beer and we were off to bed, which is exactly where we wanted to be after a long day of being soaked!