Teichelmann's Hokitika

... off, Punakaiki and the pancake rocks.

Another stop of the day is Greymouth the last point of civilisation before we get to Lake Mahinapua. We all go round the town to get our costumes for the infamous Poo pub fancy dress party. We go into one of the charity shops where we are asked if we are off the Kiwi bus as they get people in ...

... as soon as you stop. Martijn opted for standing still, and just swatting any sandfly that landed on him (he probably killed at least 20 of them in the 5 minutes we were there and looked like he was doing a Scottish folk dance ;)), while Trude kept walking back and forth to keep them away from her (looking like a woman in need of some valium ;)). Even if taking pictures while either swatting sandflies or while walking is rather tricky, we did ...

25-02 Marahau -> Punakaiki: De dag bestond vandaag voornamelijk uit rijden. Mooie slingerweggetjes door de bergen, het ene uitzicht mooier dan het andere. Onderweg moesten we stoppen omdat er een graafmachine afgebroken werd, 10 minuten zou het duren zei de wegenbouwer. Zoals op de foto te zien is gaat iedereen de auto uit om van de omgeving te genieten. De foto is gemaakt op een "snelweg" overigens, is nog eens wat anders als zo'n schijt-lelijke betonnen ...

... gold. The walk took us up to an excuse for a waterfall, but the overgrown, enchanted forest and spectacular gorge made up for it. After multiple short stops to catch our breath at the beauty we stopped in the lower gorge for our late lunch. Unfortunately we ended up being an early supper for a horde of sand flies looking for an easy meal. These little buggers seem to live on Deet, so were unmoved by the copious amounts of insect repellent we applied to ...

OK, i´m going to have to rush through this. The west coast of NZ is incredible. We drove practically in the sea. The surf is huge and unrelenting. We had bad coffee. After the amazing drive we popped into 2 glaciers. Unfortunately, 2 australian tourists had died the day before and it was also raining, so our visit was hampered ...

... the people naming the down were clearly called Umm and Err and had inherited their parents' inspiration). It has two streets of shops, almost no restaurants, and I don't think you could class it as being designed for tourists. In the i-site (tourist information centre) the adverts seemed to focus on what you can do in Abel Tasmen to the north, and Franz Josef and Fox to the south. Never-the-less, I wasn't there to see Greymouth, I was there ...

... Global warming doesn't appear to be affecting Franz Joseph.Walked up to the terminal wall which is around a 3km hike from the car park. Along the trail I stopped first at Sentinel Rock which offers great views of the glacier from an elevated position. This massive rock was once covered by the glacier and now sits a couple of kilometres from the terminal wall. As I approached the glacier there were warning signs everywhere saying don't go any further due to the unstable ice so ...

... por las formaciones que el paso de los aņos va creando, cuevas, valles, pinaculos .... Aqui, Regis, un francesito, nos pidio si podia viajar con nosotros, y desde aqui hasta que dejaramos NZ ibamos los tres en nuestro buga. Es bastante peculiar este chico, pero facil viajar con el. De lo que va hablando la gente, el se queda con frases y monta historietas graficas que estaban bastante divertidas. Le ...

... een feestje tot een uur of 1, maar ze waren hikers, dus stonden wel weer om 7.00 op... In een slaapzaal met 4 hikers liggen is niet prettig, kan ik je daarom nu uit ervaring vertellen. 1 iemand met ritselende plastic zakken is nog wel te doen, maar 4 achter elkaar.... Dus toch weer op tijd opgestaan. Het regende nog steeds en de wolken hingen erg laag.
Gelukkig klaarde het later op de ochtend op en besloten we aan de rivier nog even te lunchen, voordat we ...