West Coast - the empty, wet part of New Zealand with it's magnificent rain forests & mountains. To be fair, as we left Wanaka & Lake Hawea behind us to climb over theHaast Pass & down onto the coast, it was already starting to rain and we spent our first night freedom camping by a river in the pouring rain which continued the next morning when we got to Haast - which looks on the map like a major town but with a population of 295 is a tiny place with just a handful of houses, a couple of shops & a garage - but an internet collection so we spent the morning catching up on emails etc.

By lunchtime the rain had stopped and we took the long journey southwards down the coast to Jacksons Bay. There is no road running the entire length of the West Coast of South Island & Jacksons Bay is as far as you can go. After that, it's just totally inaccessible virgin rain forests & Fiords for the bottom 1/3 of the Island.

Jackson Bay is populated by the handful of descendants of an ill-fated attempt to build a colony on the West Coast who live on fishing + there's also an impressive population of sandflies. The vast majority of the original settlers worn down by the incessant rain and harsh conditions abandoned the place over 100 years ago.

For today's dozen or so inhabitants of Jackson Bay it's a 1 hour drive to the "shops" in Haast & a 5 hour drive to the nearest supermarket or hospital ! ! It had a strange atmosphere & if you'd have seen anyone resembling Burt Reynolds or anyone with a banjo you'd have been seriously worried ! !

For the drive north back up the coast the sun came out and here you could appreciate the virgin rain forests covering the mountains. This is what the whole of New Zealandwould have looked like when the first Europeans arrived and that's what it was like for miles & miles as we followed the coast northwards to Fox Glacier township.

Visibility was ok up to the summits of the coastal mountains but we knew that hiding behind the clouds which were permanently stuck to the tops of the first bank of mountains in a sort of rain forest "hat" there were the snow clad highest mountains in New Zealand and spectacular glaciers running from over 3000m right down almost to the sea. A month later in our journey from when we first saw Mount Cook and we were now on the other side of the mountain- but we couldn't see it.

We freedom camped on the coastal plain about 10km from Fox Glacier Township which was fantastic piece of luck because as the sun began to set, the clouds suddenly cleared &we got a glimpse of the Fox Glacier, Mount Tasman & Mount Cook 20km away in the distance across the plain. Next morning for the first hour, not a cloud in the sky and we could see in all it's glory the glacier and the 4000m peaks behind it - but only for about an hour. Then the rain forest clouds rolled over and blanked everything out again.

That afternoon we went for a guided walk on the glacier complete with crampons - very spectacular. Then the next day, just 25 km away is Franz Josef Glacier which is just as spectacular as Fox Glacier & even slightly bigger so we hiked out to see that too. These glaciers move about 10X faster than the glaciers in Europe and from 1983 to 1998 Fox Glacier "grew" by over 1km. Not suprising given that the 16 metres of rain which falls on the coast every year translates into 45 metres of snow on the top of the glacier which eventually becomes glacial ice.

Moving northwards from the glaciers we eventually came to the "town" of Hokitika which was in the throes of recovering from its biggest annual event - the "Wild Food Festival" when all the "locals" celebrate their regional cuisine - delicacies which can be had in abundance & for free - eel, possum, wild pig, rabbit, hare, deer, chamois - all washed down by vast quantities of the local beer. You can eat as much possum as you can shoot - indeed it is your civic duty to do so as there are now 70 million of them who have bred from the original animals imported from Australia to breed for fur and with no natural predator they are eating & destroying the native forests.

Continuing north from Hokitika we passed through Greymouth which was suprsingly big i.e. it took more than 5 mins to drive through it and it had more than one street. Then in glorious sunshine("what rain on the West Coast ? ?") we continued up the coast to Punakaiki where the rock formations look like stacked pancakes ! Then onwards not quite as far north as you can go north & run out of road before we turned inland to Waiuta an old gold mining ghost town which was abandonned in 1951 when the mine shaft collapsed. 600 metres up in the mountains 20km down a dirt track we were the only people in what was left of the old town - very spooky spending the night up there. The next morning we visited the remains of the town & most of it had been completely consumed by the bush in just 60 years or so. The highlight of the visit being the old barbers shop which when we looked inside through the dusty windows still had his old leather barbers chair in middle of the room ! !

By now the weather had begun to turn so we continued our journey northwards with an overnight stay by Lake Rotoroa.

We now have just over a week to go before we are booked to take the ferry to north Island and still a lot to do on the north coast of South Island.