With our travels amongst the coves and beaches of the Catlins complete our next plan was to take Barry up the infamous west cost. Starting with the Milford Sound area famous for its dazzling waterfalls and fjords and then heading further north, our plan was to see the Franz Josef glacier, stopping at any other points of interest along the way. The west coast is the most remote part of New Zealand, where at times you won't see another car for hours, or petrol station, and therefore it was important we kept Barry well fed! It also gets the most rain, and is a breeding ground to swarms of sandflies which happen to love feasting on people during the morning and evening, especially tourists travelling around in clapped up camper vans sporting lots of holes...

We wanted to start this journey bright eyed and bushy tailed so on our way out of the Catlins we decided to camp up for the night. We managed to find cheap parking and power at a nearby golfcourse, which also had washing and shower facilities. Making the most of this we managed to get all our washing done, setting up some rather ridiculous looking washing lines between the van and nearest trees. Anyone who turned up looking to play a round of golf would have thought a bunch of gypsies had moved in! That evening we even attempted to watch a film on the TV out the back of the van, however the 50p pirated dvd's we'd purchased in Indonesia proved not to be worth the money spent on them; after watching 'The Great Gatsby' all the way through it froze on us with only 20 minutes to go.

The following morning Sophie cooked up a hearty breakfast of sauages, eggs, beans and fried bread before we headed off in Barry to the town of Te Anau, which is the closest town in Milford Sound to where all the hiking routes start and where we could book ourselves onto one of the 'Great Walks'. As was now the norm, the drive there was quite stunning, especially as we approached the Sound where the landscape opened out to expansive lakes surrounded by looming mountain fjords. We arrived at the local tourist information centre and parked up Barry to get some advice on what hikes would be worth doing, and what else there was to see in the area. There are 9 'Great Walks' in New Zealand and Milford itself is home to 3 of them. The 'Milford Track' being the most famous, takes you through rainforest, mountain passes, raging rivers and 500m high waterfalls. It is usually booked out up to 6 months in advance, due to demand, so sadly there weren't any openings any time soon. With this in mind we picked up some guides to the other walks; Routeburn and Kepler, the former taking you across alpine scenery and mountain ridges and the latter passing lakes, rivers, forest and glacial valleys; quite a choice! As it was getting late in the day we decided to investigate a bit further and come to a decision the following morning. Heading back to Barry however it suddenly dawned on us that we had left the car lights on and flattened the battery. Luckily for us however the majority of Kiwi's are usually very helpful. After the initial embarrassment of trying to locate the car battery, with the assistance of an old couple and a pair of jump leads, we were back on the road and determined never to make that mistake again.....That evening we stayed at a campground near one of the lakes and decided that the Kepler track would probably be the most varied out of the remaining two walks, so planned to book it the next morning.

The following day we headed back to the tourist information centre ready to book the trip and decided to check one final time to see if there were any last minute openings on the Milford Track...Our luck was in, as a small number of cancellations showed up on screen! We quickly decided that even though the Milford Track was more expensive we'd be silly not to book it as it is the most sought after hike in the entire country. So that is what we did, the only catch however was the trip wasn't due to start until the 4th of March, in a couple of weeks time! We couldn't just sit around and twiddle our thumbs until then so we decided to carry on up the west coast, see what we could see in that time and then head down the east coast back to Milford for the hike.This would require a lot of back and forth and a long long drive back down south but we decided it would be worth it, and that Barry would be up to the task. Not wasting any time, we gave him a good check over and hit the road.

The first days' drive took us along winding roads and through forested valleys, most of the time the only sign of life would be the odd car passing us in the opposite direction or an eagle hovering by the roadside looking for an evening meal, oh and the odd sheep of course... Eventually we pulled over by a lake and cooked up some chilli before driving on into the night, where the landscape was quite spooky as we wound around a deep valley, moonlight cascading off the mountains. The land gradually opened out and in the distance we could see the looming peaks of the Southern Alps, snowcapped and lit brightly by the light of the moon (a geeky side note for 'Lord Of The Rings' fans, these appeared as the misty mountains in the films). Running low on petrol and with it getting late we decided to camp up for the night, pulling over at a small motorcamp in a town called Haast. The camp office was closed so we sneakily parked up behind some trees hoping not to be noticed.

On the road early the next morning we headed to Franz Josef, first stopping off at Fox Glacier to take a look. Fox is the smaller and quieter of the 2 glaciers and it took about 45 minutes to reach the foot of it. Sadly it isn't that much to look at as it has retreated a long way in recent years along with Franz Josef, which are both no longer reachable on foot. We took a few photos of the glacier face which was a fairly dirty colour and headed back to Barry in the hope that Franz Josef would be more impressive. About 30 minutes later we arrived in the glacier village, where our original plan was to see what the cost of a heli-hike would be, which would include a helicopter flight onto the glacier itself and then several hours of hiking along it and through various ice tunnels. We spoke to a couple of companies that provided the trips at a hefty price tag of over $400 (£200) each, so we decided to go and mull our options over a lunch of cornish pasties, donuts and chai latte's... We came to the conclusion that it was too expensive, and with a bit of quick research we found out that while im Argentina we would get the chance of visiting the 'Perito Moreno' glacier in Patagonia, which is more spectacular and far cheaper to get to. Therefore we decided that we would be patient and wait until then. It didn't stop us hiking to the foot of the glacier though, which was a pretty easy walk and also fairly impressive. It was easy to imagine the once huge sprawling glacier filling the carved out valley we walked through.

Heading north once again there was little in the way of interest along the coast, just lots of rain and forest, and as the sun was setting over the coast we looked to find the nearest campsite. Our Lonely Planet mentioned a strange place called Pukeara, a small village made up of just several buildings which all seemed to be owned by the same person; a pub, wild food shop and a motor camp. Apparently 'wild food' means possum pies which Trevor was keen on trying, although upon arrival the small cluster of buildings appeared to be deserted. Closer inspection revealed some very bizarre signs, with various anti establishment messages including a guillotine caked in what we assumed was fake blood, sporting a message about the coming revolution... The only sign of life was a large goat tied to a tree which kept rearing up on two legs to eat leaves, and who we were pretty sure wasn't the owner... We decided it may not be the ideal place to stay as it looked like a scene out of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', so drove off before the owner / axe murderer appeared. We eventually stopped at the next town on called 'Ross', an old gold prospecting town in full swing at the turn of the 19th century...it wasn't any longer. Near the town centre was an old pub called the Empire Hotel which had basic facilities for us to be able to park up at. The patrons propping up the bar seemed to be mainly bikers, enjoying an evening drink and smoke. The landlady was very friendly and showed us around and we set to making ourselves dinner, using the kitchen which hadn't had any appliances replaced since at least the 1970's.

We enjoyed a lay in the following morning, the first in a while, and headed to the town of Greymouth along the coast. There wasn't much here to see though we stopped at Warehouse to buy cheap sleeping bags ready for the Abel Tasman track we'd be doing soon. As we wound our way up the coast the next town of note was Hokatika, where we stopped for some coffees, had a brief look around the shops and headed to the beach to look at some rather odd driftwood sculptures that had been constructed. The road out of town followed very close to the coast, where we stopped several times on the way to admire the views and take a dip in the sea, even spotting dolphins on one occasion. Our final diversion before heading across the northern end of the south island was at 'Pancake Rocks', aptly named because the rocks in the cliff area look like pile upon pile of pancakes... Through some obscure geological process they have formed like this, and while probably very exciting to a geologist, we appreciated the views but didn't find it to be the spectacular sight that the guide book promised. There was also a large blowhole there which created an impressive roaring sound when the tide rushed in, but the sea wasn't that rough so we weren't that bowled over by it. Finally the coast road wound inland and after a couple of days on the road, following the Buller river we drove through some very densely forested countryside, eventually stopping at a small DOC campsite surrounded by hills. With a nice view we parked up, put out the camp chairs, started dinner and then proceeded to be mercilessly attacked by swarms of sandflies which required us to make a hasty retreat into our van!

Our journey up the west coast was a real mixed bag, it can be quite a lonely place, lacking many of the big tourist draws that the east coast seems to offer, although that said this was often part of the attraction. Along the way we saw some quirky and at times odd sights but we reckon no trip to New Zealand would be complete without experiencing it first-hand!