ALL DAY BREAKFAST
If I ever treated you to lunch while I worked at the other place, there’s a 100% chance that you know how I feel about all day breakfast. I have been trying, in vain, to find a place in Dunners that replicates the awesomeness that is the $6 breakfast at King’s Diner in Londontown. I had almost given up hope when I found this place. Sausages, eggs, toast, hash brown and BOTTOMLESS COFFEE (which is totally unheard of in New Zealand) for $10. Amazing, yes – but it gets better.
That’s right, not only does this diner serve my favourite meal, but they also collect hats. If you’ve ever seen me in a non-business setting, chances are pretty good that I was wearing a hat at the time – or I was about to put one on, or had just taken it off. One of my many hats. In fact, one of my new rules in life is to always buy a $6 hat.
Unfortunately, I had only brought two hats with me on this particular road trip (five in total made it up to Christchurch during my 28 day stay) and I wasn’t willing to part with either of them. But it was a really, really tough decision.
Anyway, at this point my vacation was scoring off the charts for Best.Vacation.Ever, and I was only two hours in. I think everyone’s aware that I’m not really the outdoorsy sort . . . which makes my relocation to New Zealand a bit hilarious in itself. But the cool thing about NZ is that it caters to all sorts. I’m basically interested in driving along, stopping and taking some scenic pictures, maybe do a 20-minute walk so I feel like I’m part of nature, then get back in the car and continue destroying the planet.
The drive through the Buller Gorge made me wish I knew how to kayak. The Buller river is really long, really wide, and generally pretty calm. Driving along the ridge that passes for a road, all I wanted to do was go float down the river on a kayak. Or inner tube.
At some point during the car, I stopped and got the urge to take a picture of my car next to the river. And that’s when I finally came up with a good name for my new car.
Lady Jane, a worthy successor to Shakira and Drusilla.
It takes about three hours to get from CHCH to Westport, which would have put me into Westport around 2pm if I kept driving. Instead, I decided to stop off at an old gold mining town and do one of the scenic 20-minute walks noted above. I parked the car, hopped over a stile, and carefully studied the park map to make sure I didn’t get lost and accidentally end up on the starting point of a 5-day walk. The Glee soundtrack pumping through my iPod, I wandered through the old gold route and got some good pictures. What can I say, I like to be one with nature.
Westport
I arrived in Westport at about 6pm, checked into my hostel (which was a cool, recently renovated turn-of-the-century house) and went for a wander down the town strip. In a nutshell, Westport feels like your 21st birthday party – if only two people showed up. With that in mind, the wander took all of two minutes, which amounted to looking for a restaurant and taking a picture of the mountains that overlook the town.
Also, there were hot boys from Grand Prairie at the hostel who didn’t like to wear shirts. There are pictures, but I still can’t figure out how to put camera phone pictures onto my PC.
Karamea
My choices for entertainment were either a brewery tour in Westport, or to drive up the coast to Karamea, which sits on the edge of Abel Tasman National Park. I opted for the latter, and was rewarded with a pretty awesome day. The drive out there was terrifying, but I left early enough that I didn’t have to deal with either camper vans or logging trucks. I also stopped in Hector on the way there, which is named after the world’s smallest, cutest, and most endangered dolphin.
The cool thing about the West Coast is it’s got a really variable climate. The southern bit is Fjordland, full of glaciers and fjords and stuff, but the northern bits near Karamea are tropical rainforest. Karamea led to the following observations.
Ooh, it's like Avatar or something.
Old mining towns often had bathhouses.
The end loop of the 5-day Abel Tasman walk, one of the Great Walks of New Zealand. I opted for the one-hour “circuit track” that loops around the end, and then found this gem. Three guesses as to which way I went.
Police stations can also be houses
Sheep make great domestic pets (yes, that’s a sheep house)
Nature is cool. The pictures below are rock formations that were carved by the river. The drive out there was about 35km on a dirt road, that was just wide enough for two cars to fit across. At the end there was about a two-hour return walk to see both caves. Pure awesome.
After a big day, I went back to Westport, had some fish & chips and spent the night chatting away with some rather interesting travellers at the hostel. Which was a bit surreal since that’s all hostellers do on the brochures.
This rarely actually happens in real life.
Greymouth
With a population of 16,000, Greymouth is the largest town on the West Coastal, and also boasts the only West Coast amenities like a McDonald’s, a Warehouse (Kiwi Zellers) and a Starbucks. In a fascinating display of Kiwi ingenuity, it is situations at the mouth of the Grey river. To get there, I drove along the coast, stopping off at Cape Foulwind, which was named because it’s downwind of a rather large NZ fur seal colony. I also had a decent hot dog – yum! I also stopped off at the Punakaikia rocks (“Pancake Rocks”) – and yes, my spelling is off – to take the obligatory tourist photos. This was probably the busiest place I’ve been in New Zealand.
Greymouth itself is very cute, and pretty much shuts down at 5pm. For entertainment, there’s the Monteith’s Brewery, a few mining / colonial museums, and a neat little pier leading out to the Tasman Sea. I managed a big win because hostel I stayed at had a hot tub. I know what you’re thinking – eww, gross, communal hot tub. Which was my first reaction, too.
But . . . the hostel was really clever in that they charge you $5 to use it for an hour. I checked the schedule, and it had only been used once that day – confirming my belief that most hostel stayers aren’t going to spring $5 for a soak. It also smelled of fresh chlorine, which was a good sign. Needless to say, I managed two hours in there of the sixteen hours total that I was in Greymouth.
I didn’t actually do anything in Greymouth other than eat, sleep and hot tub, as I left at 8am the next day for Arthur’s Pass way up in the mountains. I was rather keen to get back to Christchurch by late afternoon, because the fish and chip shop closes at 8pm (yes, that was actually my reason).
A kea, pretty much the most adorable parrot on the planet and a fantastic scrabble word.
Arthur’s Pass leads to Arthur’s Pass village, and I wandered around the town and did two separate 45-minute trails. I was a bit ashamed at my laziness when I met a family group spanning three generations. Roughing it fail.
I also saw my first live performance of a flugelhorn. But, apparently I didn't take a picture of it.
Oh, and I picked up some hitchhikers on their way back to Christchurch. I don’t normally do this, but they were really young, and their “Christchurch” sign looked sort of like this.
CHRISTCHurc
Obviously, they realized halfway through that they were running out of space. And so ends vacation the first.
Nice pictures, New Zealand looks beautiful, much nicer than Iroquois!!
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