Kia-Ora folks, from Milford Sound!

Right, its been a while since our last update so ill attempt to give you a run through on the last weeks events since our Whale watch 'experience' (does that seem like AGES ago to anyone else?)

So, after we left off in the last blog entry we headed out of Kaikoura south towards Arthurs Pass. As seems to be the norm here at the moment it was cats and dogs outside so we decided to spend the night just short of the pass in the hope that the next morning would be clearer and therefore the view of the scenery better. The night was spent at Ashley Gorge which was pretty un-spectacular really. Hearty meal (Yum-yum noodles, duck flavour. 40cents, job done) and bed was the evenings rough itinerary.

Thursday morning arrived along with a hopeful glance from the camper window at the weather. What do you recon the odds were on a bright day knowing that we were praying for one??

Yea thats right, not good and as we kind of expected it was still raining and cloudy. We had heard that Arthurs Pass was one of the most scenic drives in the south island, which is some statement when your constantly surrounded by postcard scenery but as we headed away from the east coast and more into apparent wilderness it was as nice as we had heard, if a little obscured by the weather.

It took us about an hour to arrive at Arthurs Pass village which is pretty much about 5 buildings along the side of the road encased in rugged valley with a river running along one side and waterfalls visible among the bush from the road.

After a quick stop at the DOC (department of conservation) office to check which walks we would be ok on considering we had no real equipment (some of the walks were days long for example, along a track right into the wilderness) we decided on two 'easy' ones that were 30 and 90 minutes each.

The first walk we did was "The Devils Punchbowl" which was a 15 minute walk up seemingly never ending stair cases through bush until you reached a viewing platform for the Devils Punchbowl falls. To reach the trail though to even start the walk you have to cross a river due to the heavy rain here having washed away the bridge that was here previously. Anyway, when we did eventually reach the viewing platform at the falls it was worth the walk as the view was quite nice to say the least as you looked up to see a two tier waterfall cascading down into the river, flowing out down the hillside into the bush below. We also discovered just how unfit we both were, incase we needed reminding!

After descending back down the stairs to the foot of the hillside we decided to tackle the second walk while we were in the mood (it was still raining as well in case you were wondering) which was called "Bridal Vail". Now we still have the info leaflet for this walk which states that the walk is "easy going" as well as being a relatively flat walk through the bush.

Well, after walking along the track for 10 minutes or so we kinda realised that someone at the info leaflet publishing office was obviously having a laugh...
This walk was routed up through the bush along the track of what was seemingly a small river (no, seriously). There were no real steps as such, it was climbing along wet rocks on stupidly steep angles in places whilst looking to your immediate side and seeing a sheer drop through the bush! Easy?? We're maybe not the fittest but if thats easy the Kiwi's must be a nation of absolute units!

As is the case with us, because we started we must finish.

Well, not quite, we got maybe 40 minutes along the track and stopped briefly at the lookout over Arthurs Pass village in the valley below which made the trip a little more fruitful, after that we about turned and made our way back down the stream to the car park.

That was enough walking for one day so we had a quick brew and set off along the remainder of the Arthurs Pass track through to the west coast and Greymouth which is where we spent the night.

Friday morning we were up reasonably early (for us at least) and spent the morning in the public library (free Wi-Fi) checking a few things on the net before exiting Greymouth and heading south down the coast.

You can see where the 'Grey' in Greymouth is derived once you've visited here as well, its pretty boring to be fair. Another of those places that you drive through rather than to. I think every nation in the world has their own little St.Helens (apologies St.Helens but you know its true!).

After consulting our two guidebooks it seemed that there wasn't a great deal to see between Greymouth and the two famous glaciers further down the coast so the only stop we made was at a small town called "Ross" about two thirds of the way down the coast.

Ross is an ex gold mining town put firmly on the map in the 1800's during the gold rush when one lucky mo-fo uncovered a kilo nugget of gold in the creek nearby. The nugget was nick-named "Honourable Roddy".
Today the town exists still on the legacy of old Roddy and you can still pan for gold in the same creek in the hope of un-earthing one of Roddy's great great grand-nuggets. As you've probably gathered by now that was our plan for the afternoon so after renting a couple of pans, a shovel and being given a crash course in gold panning we headed off down to the creek with dreams of un-told wealth running through our young and naive minds...

In our flip flops we waded through the creek (which was bloody freezing by the way) until we found a spot that looked like it could easily be brimming with gold and set about shovelling gravel/sand into our pans and slowly working it through in the water before there was nothing left but sand and some tiny fragments of rock.

Not quite the gold nugget I was hoping for but on closer inspection you could see gold in amongst the sediment but it was pretty much tiny flakes not much bigger than grains of sand.

We did strike gold during our pan-a-thon but its safe to say we wont be retiring any time soon!

By this time our feet were looking a rather odd shade of blue as well so along with our meagre findings we headed back to the warmth of the camper before continuing a little further down the coast to our campsite for the night which was a DOC site along the banks of Lake Ianthe.

The DOC campsites are either free or dirt cheap and generally are set in stunning scenery but they do also have the worst toilets in the world. This one had toilets alright, only they were like the devils own throne straight from the gates of hell. They were STINKING. Not a chance on earth were you parking bot in there unless there was one hell of an emergency. The bush along with the sandflies and mozzies was more appealing...

Anyway, toilets aside the site was really nice as we pulled the camper up alongside the lake and had dinner looking across it as the sun set in the distance...

A & M xx