The Westcoast to Queenstown

On the road again -We left Nelson and drove towards Greymouth on the westcoast through the Buller Gorge, another series of twisting and winding and up and down. There was an upper Buller Gorge and also a lower Buller Gorge and I don't know which was worse. The weather was grey, cloudy and showerey, but we were lucky to hit a patch of blue sky just as we arrived at Punakaiki and the famous pancake rocks - along with a couple loads of tour busses. There is a lovely little walk to view these rocks with nice pathways and signs explaining the formation of the rocks. The rocks look like stacks of pancakes, due to years of erosion. They are quite spectaculer. On days when the waves are crashing enough, there are even blowholes, but not on this day.I guess we weren't close enough to high tide. We had a little picnic lunch and then drove on to Greymouth, where we found our motel and then went to play nine holes at the local golf course. It was pretty good for a country course, but the weather started to turn nasty with a biting wind and we were pretty cold when we were finished and wishing for the lovely jetted tub that we had in Nelson.
The next morning we drove to the quaint little town of Hokitika, where we did some window-shopping, but no buying. On through the glacier disticts of Franz Josef and the Fox glacier. We weren't really interested in glacier adventures so we only stopped at a small viewpoint where you got a glimpse of the Fox glacier, but it wasn't all that impressive. Through much of the south island, you encounter narrow one-way bridges, where there is a small sign that tells you who has the right of way. You eventually get used to them since there are so many, but along this stretch we actually came across two of these bridges that also had railroad tracks on them - I guess the train ALWAYS has the right of way! Our next stop was at a viewpoint called Knight's Point which was very nice and had great views of the Tasman Sea crashing on the rocks, but the wind was blowing and it was freezing, so we didn't stay too long.
It started raining that afternoon and didn't stop for 24 hours. We found a small motel in a town called Haast.The room was pretty small, the walls pretty thin and the TV only got two channels. There was a small hostel next door and a cafe that closed at 4 pm. There was a local tavern that has two choices for dinner - roast of the day or fish and chips - and it was packed. I guess everyone had come in for the night because of the rain, especially as the cyclists. We were amazed at the number of cyclists we encountered. Some of them on cycle tours, along with a coach and trailer for the bicycles, but many were just in groups of two to four and they were packing all of their gear with them. They must have been in great shape to be able to navigate all the elevation changes and also pretty fearless to ride on the narrow roads - not many places with shoulders.
We tried the cafe for breakfast and then on the road again. The highway turns inland now and there is still the lush vegetation of the rainforest. Sometimes you drive through tunnels of trees - both sides of the narrow road are covered with trees from 40 to 60 feet high and so thick that you can't see past them. The vegetation gets more sparse as you travel along the Haast river and up the pass and there are a couple of nice waterfalls along the way.After the pass, the road wanders along two very large lakes, Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea and the scenery is quite different now, stark and vast views. It's about two and a half hours to the nice little town of Wanaka - too bad we didn't try to make it there yesterday instead of staying in Haast. After Wanaka, there are two ways to Queenstown - one looked much shorter on the map and so we took that road. It was called the Crown Range Road - it started out just great - not much traffic and not too winding. It goes through a ski area called Cardrona and the road was still pretty good except for the last 30 km. of it. There was a great viewpoint where we stopped and we didn't realize how high up we actually were - good thing we were going down and not up because our gutless car would have had problems. It was actually a little scary going down from the viewpoint and then the last few kilometres were twisty, turny hairpins where you could only go 15 km/hour. We ended up following a road-work crew and their equipment and we were kind of glad because there was no pressure to pass them or go faster - it was simply not possible. We got to Queenstown safely and it was actually quite an experience. People keep telling us we should go on a jet-boat ride or some other adventure,(our son Rob went bungy jumping here) but we have enough adventures just navigating the roads.
Queenstown kind of reminded us of Banff,lots of hotels and shops, except for there is a large lake there instead of the mountains. There is a cable car ride which we took and the view was very nice. We could see a golf course on a point across the lake and we wanted to play the next day, but the weather didn't cooperate - too cold and windy. We found a nice Italian restaraunt and then the local casino, where Bob managed to win a few dollars.