Presenting... Barrytown
Trip Start
Aug 14, 2008
1
5
20
Trip End
Sep 25, 2008
Barrytown,
New Zealand
Sunday, September 7, 2008
The drive down the west coast is voted as one of the top 10 drives in the world and it's pretty lovely to be sure! The road takes you through valleys and adjacent rivers, mountains, forests and gorges, passing little former mining towns and out-of-use bridges - the area has only recently been made really accessible to the east coast. We stopped at a cafe for lunch and I ate the biggest blueberry muffin I have ever seen (simply because of the challenge) and from there to our final destination we had lots of stops en route - it even stopped raining for the Buller Gorge which was very fortunate (shame there was a dead cow at the bottom of it washed up on one of the rocks ruining the beauty a touch!). The rugged west coast actually quite suited the moody, stormy weather, especially as the clouds filled the valleys.
We stopped at Punakaiki, which is famed for its coastal rocks formed like stacks of pancakes - quite an awesome sight. We reached Barrytown, which is basically a pub (where we stay), a few houses and lots of cows serving the 40 very unique west-coasters that live there! We went down to the beach to look for greenstone which sometimes washes up there - Stephanie the German even found some!
Thumper had built us up to the tradition of Barrytown in the Stray tour - basically a team building night on the Stray Camp where you "HAVE" to dress up and get drunk! It feels so forced but who am I to argue - the theme for tonight is Tyrants (for girls) and trash (for boys) and there were a number of dressing up boxes waiting for us when we arrived. I went as the woman in Sweeney Todd (or any crazy lady) - my outfit consisting of a dress, spatula, back combed hair and my slippers. Had a pub dinner of fish and chips and beat TJ at pool (twice), which he absolutely hated, having stated how he "cannot allow a girl to beat me (him) at sport ever" earlier in the day! The evening passed quite nicely and it turned out to be a good night (when is it ever anything but a good night when Twister is involved?! The locals came in too and most of them were absolutely crazy - there was even a rumour they were all high on coke - but they were such characters. Out of the visiters, I was the last one standing and remained in the bar experiencing these nutcases for a few hours more - it was gone 4am when I finally clambered into my top bunk!
