Our second day at Fox Glacier was as bad, weather-wise, as the first. After a stormy night we had a dull, wet morning and decided to do not much, stay at home and catch up on blogs, emails and photo processing. By lunchtime things were improving a bit, and we thought we'd look at least at the Franz Joseph glacier, the next place on, and get that done before we were travelling up to Greymouth. We drove up there, found the glacier access road, and started with a 20 minute walk to Peter's Pool, from which - when there's no wind at all - you can apparently get good pictures of reflections of the glacier in the pool. Today, though, there was some wind and the pictures were less than brilliant. I sat in the car while H. climbed Sentinel Rock, from which you can also get good views, and she took a couple of pictures there too.
Then it was back to the ranch, and eventually out to the local cafe for our evening meal. Again we ran into the problem of having a full, slap-up meal or ..well, there was little alternative. We just had a main course but it was still pretty substantial, and expensive by UK standards.
Overnight the weather cleared a little. We'd negotiated the chance of a flight if there were any going, and when we got up the clouds were much higher and we could see both Mount Tasman and Mount Cook, so we were quite hopeful. We dashed out to take pictures of their reflections in the pond at our B & B! But by the time we'd finished breakfast, they were in cloud again and the next weather front was coming in. We packed up, loaded the car and checked out, and stopped hopefully to enquire at the helicopter office, but it was the same story: too low cloud, too much wind and no flights at all today. So we had to abandon that part of our holiday, and just drive on northwards.
The drive was pretty good. There were several scenic points along the coast where we stopped for pictures. Eventually we reached Hokitika, a small coastal town famous for its Pounamu jade. We looked in a place called 'The Jade Factory', and I bought a pendant and earrings: we then had a light lunch in the cafe adjoining before driving down to the beach itself. Here, it seems, you can still find stones of jade, though we didn't go looking as the sand was wet and sticky and would have been a problem to clean off our shoes. Instead, we took more pictures, drove along the beach and the quayside up the river, and then on up towards Greymouth.
We had plenty of time in hand, so we went on first to Goldsborough, a small place off the main road and the site of a former gold-rush area. Here we went on a shortish walk which began through a mining tunnel and then went on through a forest with some unusual vegetation, ending with a return to the road through another mining tunnel. It was yet another unexpected delight: such things have been quite frequent in this amazing country.
Then we drove up to Greymouth, but we were still too early to go and check in at our B & B, so we went on northwards to Punakaiki where there are some fascinating 'pancake rocks', looking like a stack of pancakes. Apparently nobody has yet worked out how they came to be like this. In some of them are 'blowholes' where the sea comes crashing through in a cloud of spray. It was all quite a sight and we had great fun photographing and videoing it all.
Finally we turned back and drove down to our B & B. When we arrived there were two visiting Americans, Tom and Linda, sitting on the terrace over a glass of wine - clearly our sort of people! We chatted to them with a cup of tea made by Alison, the landlady, and we decided to go and eat together at the nearby restaurant which Tom and Linda had found earlier. It made a pleasant change to have company for the meal.
Next morning it was still grey and wet, so we again spent some time indoors, catching up on our various recordings of our holiday, and then we set off for Greymouth Station. I'll describe our journey to Christchurch in the next posting.
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