[Nz2003] Christchurch -> Greymouth -> Nelson

[Edmund A. Hintz]

    Sunday in Christchurch was fairly uneventful. We met up with the
local Unitarians in the AM, then wandered off to the beach for the
afternoon. Found a cute little cafe on the pier at New Brighton, had a
spot of lunch, then drove south to Sumner, which seems to be the
desirable neighborhood of Christchurch. Reminded us a lot of Malibu in
many respects; nice houses, beach atmosphere, stunning ocean views. One
thing that was different was the prices; some very nice places could be
had for $350k NZD. In otherwords, on a sysadmin salary with a little
extra income, we could have a Malibu style house and view. Not bad at
all. Closed the day out with a visit to Sgt. Peppers Steakhouse, great
steaks and cute design. The place is decked out with British Invasion
decor, mostly Beatles but a few Who and whatnot scattered about, and
Beatles soundtrack. The folks there were fantastic, took Hunter back into
the kitchen and let him flip a steak. Sadly, we'd neglected to bring the
camera and have no photos. We also picked up one of the best buys of the
trip; The Lord Of The Rings Location Guidebook by Ian Brodie. I only wish
we'd had it earlier, we've already missed most of the stuff on South
Island, and this book has all of it. If you're planning a trip to NZ and
have any interest at all in LOTR you need this book. And a GPS-the author
provides GPS co-ordinates for all the stuff that's on public lands. On
our trip to North Island we'd only planned to hit Hobbiton, but thanks to
this book we're also going to see several sites around Wellington, and
the spot where Isildur cut the ring from Sauron's hand. Tres cool. Yes,
I'm a geek. Deal. ;-)

    Monday we hit the road. Our original plan was to continue up the East
side of the Island to Blenheim, but there were several things on the West
coast which we'd passed up and we decided to go back that way. We really
dig the West coast anyway, so it was a good excuse to go back.
Ironically, all the stuff we wanted to do around Greymouth was a wash;
the Dolphin swim operator isn't there anymore, the ATV outfit won't let
Hunter on the bikes, and the cave-tubing folks also said Hunter was too
small. But, nobody cares, because the drive from Christchurch to
Greymouth was, bar none, the most spectacular drive of the entire trip.
The weather is rainy with low clouds, and as we climbed into the
mountains the tops were often wrapped in mists, which made for some
awesome views. Not all of them worked on camera but those that did are
fantastic. Furthermore, because of the rain, there were waterfalls all
over the place. We made terrible time on the trip, constantly stopping to
ogle and take photos. If you're planning a trip down here, forget the
coast road from Greymouth down to Haast and over to Queenstown; go inland
over Arthurs pass and then down to Queenstown. Words fall far short for
describing the glory of the area; they are all pale insignificant shadows
of the vast panoramas. Go there.

    At Greymouth we ended up blowing a couple of hours and $700NZ at an
outdoor outfitter, mostly on boots for both of us, as well as some
thermals undies, several pairs of wool and possum socks, and a rather
nice leather hat ala Crocodile Dundee. Not too far outside of town we got
some sweet photos of breakers. The wind was blowing hard to the West, so
as the waves broke the spray blew back behind them, the sort of thing one
often sees in those photos of hurricanes in FL and such. Further North we
stopped at the Pancake rocks, basically some really interesting rock
shapes left after years of erosion; the look as if they're stacked hence
the pancake moniker. Beyond that, we drove like hell to get to Nelson,
finally got in around 7pm. Latest drive yet on this trip, usually we're
stopped by 4-5pm, and up to now our latest run was from Auckland to
Mokau, arriving around 6pm. We're likely going to spend one day in
Nelson, then cross the ferry to Wellington on the following day,
finishing up the journey on North Island. We really don't want to leave
this place, but with only 10 days left in the trip the time is drawing
near. These folks living on the West Coast are some of the luckiest folks
in the world as far as I'm concerned. I hope we can be among them
sometime in the future.

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Regards,

Ed Hintz
ed@hintz.org