Day 16: Travel from Fox Glacier to Christchurch

Our 16th day in New Zealand started with bright sunshine and the promise of a gorgeous day.  Of course, this meant that my camera happy compadres had to make one last attempt to get the perfect postcard image at Lake Matheson.  So, for the THIRD time in the previous 24 hours, we headed back in that direction.  Take a look at the picture and tell me if it was worth wasting another precious New Zealand hour to capture.  (I was more than happy with just buying the post card!!)

At this point, I'm rather bored and ready to get on with the trip.  I spent my time speed-walking the trail to get a little pent up energy out since I had a solid 6 hours in the car ahead of me.

Once we were FINALLY leaving the Lake Matheson/Fox Glacier area, we headed north up the western coast line of the south island (Everyone follow all those directions?).  We stopped in a little town called Hokitika for lunch and shopping.  Hokitika is know for its vast sources of jade.  If you want something made from jade, this is the place to find it.  We picked up a few souvenirs for friends and family and then took a short stroll out to the beach.  So this is the first time since I had set foot in New Zealand that I was not impressed.  This beach was very pebbly, gray and the ocean water was gray and muddy.  I was curious if that is what the water always looked like in that area, as I had become quite accustomed to nothing less than magnificent everywhere that I traveled in this little island country.  Nevertheless, we did find some really cool, super flat rocks to bring home to the kids.

After Hokitika, we headed east towards Christchurch.  Late in the afternoon we crossed Arthur's Pass, the highest pass over the Southern Alps in New Zealand.  This area looks much like Switzerland with all the jagged peaks.   We stopped at several of the scenic overlooks to see what we could see.  At our first stop, the main attraction was a little visitor in the parking lot.  We finally saw our first Kea!  We've heard so much about these little creatures and warned to keep our boots hung up, etc ... but we had yet to actually lay eyes on this mischievous animal.  We followed the little guy around the parking lot with our cameras, taking picture after picture, hardly taking notice of the magnificent views.

After leaving the parking lot, we crossed the Otira Viaduct.  I wasn't exactly sure what a "viaduct" was.  Sounds like some kind of rain drainage system, but apparently it's the super cool, long bridge that we crossed over.  This particular area is prone to avalanches, rock slides and massive pour-offs during torrential rain.  We were rather amused by the creative ways that the Kiwi's managed to overcome these obstacles when building their roads.

It was getting late in the day and we thought Arthur's Pass would be a great place to take our daily hike.  One of the things I love about New Zealand is that no matter where you are, you can find a beautiful trail to take a hike on.  We stumbled upon Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall for today's adventure.  It was straight up for a beautiful view.   As we all know, what goes up, must come down.  By this point, I've had plenty of downhill practice and made it down this mountain in record speed ... for me that is. Everyone was still waiting for me at the bottom!

Following our hike, we continued towards Christchurch.  The terrain took on a more bumpy shape as opposed to just plain mountainous.  We also started seeing quite a few rock outcroppings scattered around the "lamb"scape (That's not a spelling error.  Every square inch of NZ is covered with sheep.). 

In New Zealand, they don't have expressways except in the largest of cities (think Auckland and Christchurch).  Their main thoroughfares are twisty-turvy, two-lane roads.  There are no billboards, strip malls, subdivisions, etc ...  What does line the roads are these miniature billboards with safe-driving messages ... "Feeling tired?  Take a power nap!"  The funniest one that we saw was heading to Christchurch.  It had a picture of the road with the dividing line down the middle.  On the left had side it said "live."  On the right hand side it said "die."  Apparently these poor folks have quite a problem with the foreigners driving on the wrong side of the road!  We all sat there silently in the car when we first saw the sign, no one commenting at all. About 15 seconds later, we all burst out laughing when we finally got the gist of the message.  It was too funny!

We arrived in Christchurch around 7pm.  Considering they had a major earthquake two weeks prior, we were expecting to encounter "something."  What that "something" was, we didn't know.  But the streets were fine.  We didn't see any damaged houses.  The place where we stayed had water and power.  We didn't witness anything that would indicated something tragic had befallen the city recently.  We did talk to the proprietor of our home-stay and she told us the worst of the damage was southeast of where we were staying, in the central part of the city.  That area was closed off and there wasn't any part of Christchurch that we open for touring.

After a good dinner, several rounds of pool and too many beers, we all laid our heads down to rest, looking forward to the next day ... a wine tour of the area!