West Coast

The drive from the north to the west coast was pretty spectacular around one mountain range and through another. The last section is along the Buller Gorge which winds through the mountains

Buller Gorge

They like their single lane bridges here and we also came across some single lane roads that happen around tight bends in the mountains, luckily it wasn’t very busy as you can’t tell if someone is coming from the other direction. Warwick kept himself amused by pointing out each dead Stote on the road and yelling out “Stote” (previously he had been calling them Kiwi’s but realised there aren’t that many Kiwi’s in NZ) and then changed to speaking in NZ accent, which is actually worse.

The first town we came across on the West Coast was Westport, which we drove straight through and headed to “Cape Foulwind” which I’d spotted on the map and had to check it out. Warwick and I had our own ideas as to it got this name but the official story is that Captain Cook was held offshore for a week by a terrible storm and so it was named. There’s a nice little walk up to the lighthouse and around the cliff’s and also a seal colony nearby.

We continued down the coast to Charleston, a tiny little village, there’s a pub and a dive of a caravan park (I won’t repeat what Warwick thought of it as I’m sure his mother is reading this). The main reason for stopping here was to try out the cave rafting which one of the guys at work recommended, although his dad runs it so we were a little hesitant as to how good it would be. We’ve never been caving before and it was a great experience, one of the highlights so far.

Cecil the rainforest train took us up to the caves – the motor was from a Moris Minor

Cave formations

Warwick and I preparing ourselves for the black water rafting where all lights are off and we float through the underground caves guided by the glowworms (best part of the caving)

Travelling back to the train on the rapids

After the caving we hopped back into Moby and continued our journey south along the coast drive, which meandered along the mountain sides, similar to the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Warwick was driving so poor Moby was bouncing along (literally) and was pretty shaken up on the inside. We also came across more single lane bridges but these ones also took trains, as if it wasn’t difficult enough already for just cars. We stopped for the night at a great caravan park in Hokitika, which had some free roamingcheeky chickens. Tomorrow we set off for the glacier region.