Christchurch to West Coast

Once we turned in our rental car there was an audible sigh of relief across the North Coast, South Island, but then our second round of fun began with our Active New Zealand Group. We headed west by bus from Christchurch through Castle Rock, where battle scenes from "the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" were filmed. Soft limestone formations are exposed and eroded in fantastic shapes that we stopped to climb on for lunch. By evening we had reached the West Coast and headed north from Greymouth to Paparoa National Park to see the gravel beaches, hike up some rivers, and see the famous "pancake rocks" with blow holes. These limestone rocks, though layered, are believed formed by chemical and pressure effects of deep burial, but now raised up by the active tectonism of the area. We explored the beach as well, but were vary wary of the surf and likely strong undertow. The weather was unusualy calm and still there were rogue waves occasionally chasing us up toward the cliffs bounding the beach.

Here we also discovered the "sand flies" which actually don't care much about sand, since they'll come after you anywheere near the coast. There are no mosquitoes, or snakes, or other dangerous animals or insects, but these sand flies are tenacious and leave itchy welts for 7-10 days, and make you a believer in insect repellant. The West Coast of South Island is similar to the west coast of North America, with a prevailing wind coming onshore and rocky cliffs bounding the beaches. The further south you go, the more you find temerate rain forest and lush vegetation, similar to going north from California up to the Olympic Pennisula in Washington State. The highest mountains are in south central South Island around Mt Cook, and we gradually wended our way south along the west coast and hiked up to Franz Josef Glacier - very impressive.

There were some opportunities to go up on the glacier, which some of our group chose to do, but it was enough for us to hike up to the face and see the signs of tremendous erosive power demonstrated along the way. The river bed up to the glacier was mostly trap rock and boulders, subject to massive reorganization every time there's a rainstorm. Since the west coast averages 30 feet of rain per year, washouts and flood are frequent, and prudent hikers keep a close eye on weather up in the valleys above them! We had mostly sunshine so our main concern was avoiding sun burn from the extra bright sun - we were under the ozone hole inthe upper atmosphere. The sun seemed brighter and "whiter" as opposed to the yellow color we see around North America - the ozone hole lets in more blue, violet, and UV frequencies! We were on our way south to Queenstown, where we would stay a few days before heading again to the upper Hollyford River valley to begin "The Hollyford Track", a trek down the river to the coast.