After two nights at Abel Tasman, we took off down the Wild West Coast and did a lot of sight seeing on the way. We saw the Buller Gorge, the seal colony at Westport and the pancake rocks and blowholes at Paparoa National Park.

 

The west coast of Australia is a lot like the west coast of Ireland, in terms of landscape, sea-scape, the area being slightly neglected by the government in terms of economic investment and of course a hell of a lot of rain. Now we managed to avoid for most of the time but still there is a distinct Irish feel to it! Even the seal colony was in a place called Westport!!! Some of the locals I met in Barrytown remind me of some of the people I have dealings with in work – classic!!! All good fun though. We had a good night out there even though we suspected that the bus company engineer this whole day so everyone stays at Barrytown (which they basically own) We were promised a mad night out, which is wasn’t, but good old craic all the same.

I met a couple of locals in the pub who were openly smoking funny fags, the contents of which they cultivate themselves. Makes for entertaining conversation 🙂 We also got a great home cooked roast chicken dinner with loadsa veggies and roast potatoes (I’m not a fan of roasties – I think they are just shrivelled up potatoes) but nonetheless it all went down a treat 🙂

The next day saw us busing it to Franz Josef, home of one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. On the way, we stopped at this crazy Bushman’s centre. It basically explains a bit about the west coast, the animals that were introduced from other parts of the world and the history of reindeer farming. New Zealanders are crazy, man, they introduced reindeers, then started shooting them awhen the population grew too large and then when the price of meat went up they started capturing them from the west coast. Now the interesting part is how they captured them. They literally flew around in a helicopter and a nominated mad-man jumped and rugby tackled the reindeers to the ground, hog tied them and hooked them on to the helipcopter while they went on to find more victims. The method then developed into using a kind of net gun which dropped a net over the reindeer so the Bushmen didn’t have to wrestle them as much. Seriously, these people were nuts!!!! What the hell is wrong with using a tranquilliser dart????? It was very entertaining though, in particular the cafe menu gave us a laugh…..

….we weren’t tempted to sample any of these “treats” though!!

Anyhoo back to Franz Josef and we had to climb it to see what it was like. it’s kinda spooky though because you get glimpses of it around the town and it’s mighty!!!

It’s so huge that where we started in the car park, you’re kinda thinking, we’ll be at the base of it in about 10 minutes but it actually takes about an hour or so to even get on the ice. We went for a half day trek and it was really good. Amazing scenery and surprisingly warm (hence the shorts) until the sun went in and the wind started. Then it was fricken cold man!!!!!

You can almost see the cold on my face, can’t you??? And anyone who knows me, will know I’m a serious coldy-cat 🙂 Still though it was worth it to do this…..

…….and see this

The only thing was, I didn’t really feel like I had enough time up there. We really should have gone for a full day’s trek (as everyone who did was on a high afterwards) but the half day was probably 8 or 10km and we thought we might have enough as the full day was 6 hours on the ice, plus I was kinda sick that day so I was speed wobbling a bit – not so good for walking on the ice. It is a bit freaky actually, the spikes totally weld you to the ice but you still think you’re going to fall. Very enjoyable though and I highly recommend anyone to try it – but go for a full day or I think some companies do a three-quarter day. Back to camp and I finished off my day steaming in the sauna and a tasty dinner and it was all good 🙂

We headed off the following day and caught some glances of Fox Glacier and Mount Cook. Our last stop on the wild west track was in Makarora, where there was pretty much a petrol station/hostel/bar/restaurant – exciting stuff!! (I foolishly believed that these might all be in separate buildings, alas no but what do you expect in a town with a population of 40!! Roll on a little civilisation (I hope) in our next few stops – Wanaka & Queenstown.

Until next time…….more photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157612546211613/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157612636420468/