wet and wild in greymouth :)

so this is very old news by now, but i thought i'd post about a day trip to the west coast that we took shorly after we'd decided to move back to the states, when "one last time" and a little sigh were being added to every proposed outing. for a reason that i can't quite pinpoint, we chose dreary greymouth over the alpine beauty of lake tekapo but still found plenty of dramatic scenery and windy roads to keep us awake for the 8-hour return journey.



We all look hideous in this photo but it's
the only one I have of the three of us.

we headed off in phil's car on a saturday morning along arthur's pass, the high road through a mountain pass that connects christchurch on the east coast with greymouth on the west coast. in the morning we could look out over the pacific ocean and imagine south america far beyond the horizon, and by lunchtime we were gazing towards australia over the tasman sea. i love living in a small country. our first stop was not, unfortunately, for "world-famous pies" in the town of springfield, but at the scenic and remote lake lyndon, where these first few pictures were taken. we weren't far enough into our road trip to need much time away from the car, so we walked down to the lakeshore for a quick glance, trying not to disturb the fishermen whose tranquillity we were interrupting, and popped back on the road, trying to beat the impending rain.



bryan at lake lyndon



phil at a rest stop along the pass, admiring the hugeness of the glacial valley.



half an hour beyond lake lyndon, having passed only access roads to one or two skifields not yet in season, the hills flattened out and we pulled into a packed little parking lot by the castle rock formations, a series of exposed rocks that have weathered in such a way as to make them resemble castle ruins on a hillside. we'd seen pictures of these before from a trip that the youth group made out here last year to do some climbing, but we weren't quite as ambitious and only managed a brief wander after a single halfhearted attempt to scale a large boulder, which proved to be much too slippery for our tennis shoes. we couldn't believe how many other travellers had stopped here as well, as the roads were nowhere near crowded and tourist season was clearly coming to a close. could be the effect of nothing to see in christchurch since the earthquake.





arthur's pass is a fun road to travel along, as it is soon flanked by steep snow-peaked mountains and high waterfalls flowing down the wide riverbed carved out by glaciers many moons ago. i don't particularly enjoy driving its blind curves, always aware of the thousand-foot drop close at hand, but observing from the backseat with a safe and confident driver is a pleasant thing in this part of new zealand. at times the landscape eases into grassy hilltops dotted with sheep or skinny lakes rimmed with golden trees, and at those times you wouldn't want to be anywhere but in the car on a drizzly autumn day with a few bags of chips and a comfy pair of sweatpants.



the aqueduct diverting rainfall over the road, just past
the highest elevation of the pass

bryan and i had travelled along the western half of arthur's pass on a side trip while driving down the west coast in 2009 with our german acquaintance, david, whom we'd met in a cheap hostel after finishing the heaphy track, so reaching the tiny town of arthur's pass halfway through our drive with phil marked the completion of this route and the beginning of familiar territory. we opted not to stop in arthur's pass, as there's not much to see and it was raining too hard to make even a short hike very attractive, and drove on through to the west coast in miserable weather. the west coast is known for unfathomable quantities of rain, so we rejoiced to see greymouth in its element and actually did enjoy the rugged splendor that a low fog and misty weather lend to the largish town at the mouth of the depressingly-named grey river.   



we didn't last long in greymouth, stopping for less than an hour to restock our snack supply, read about the massive floods of the mid-90s that led to the building up of the river's retaining wall (above), and hit up a good sale at toyworld. the highlight of the day, however, was finding the lookout point above the turbulent meeting point of the wild tasman sea and the powerful grey river, where the waves crashed violently against the rocks and reinforced why the west coast is no popular swimming spot.

on the way back i convinced phil to take a detour along what my map had indicated was a paved road, but turned out to be mostly a rough and muddy gravel track instead. the dense, jungle-like west coast foliage eventually thinned out and revealed little gems like this tucked-away lake that justified (in my eyes at least) the extra time that we spent traversing this wild country. the rest of the trip back was uneventful, since we'd stopped at the few sights on the way in and wanted to get out of the mountains before nightfall, but the setting sun did allow for some pretty, if blurry, shots through the window on the way home.

next up: photos from the two days that we'll spend in queenstown next week...as long as the ash cloud from chile's volcanic eruption doesn't continue to ground domestic flights :(

-rachel