Seals Rock

Trip Start Sep 01, 2008
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15
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Trip End Sep 23, 2008


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Flag of New Zealand  , South Island,
Thursday, September 18, 2008

It is Thursday, the 18th, and we are headed out to see the sights along the West coast of South Island...still in the rain. We leave Greymouth and find breakfast on farther down the road at the Punakaiki Resort in Punakaiki which is also the home of Paparoa National Park and the Pancake Rocks. The rain lets up and we stop to see the Rocks and they are quite amazing. The blow holes and the rock structures were spectacular. We continue on down the road (or up the coast I should say) to Westport and Cape Foulwind where we find a seal colony and the weather is become quite nice. The seals are so cute to watch and entertaining...it is hard to pull ourselves away but we have a drive ahead of us and so we head away.
Stopping in Westport we eat a bite at Gilly's Cafe and start our trip to Nelson where we have decided to spend the night. It is a four hour drive that is mostly around mountains...so we are spending the time driving the curvy roads of New Zealand. Every so often we get a straight road and make up some time. The scenery never disappoints.
We arrive in the delightful town of Nelson which has the highest sunshine rate in the country and we are counting on this as we have had 2 days of gray and rain. As we drive in, the sun is shining...through a light rain that has begun to fall and in the distance is a rainbow!
We head to town later and get a steak at the Lone Star and return to our room to get settled in for the night.
There is one new twist to the one lane bridges in this country. We crossed over two more one lane bridges that also have a railroad track down the middle. Word is that the trains have the right of way. Weird. We are of the opinion that the absence of a "tipping" custom here for servers has one unintended result: the servers don't work very hard at what they do.
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Comments

bootser1
bootser1 on Sep 18, 2008 at 09:03AM

Thursday here
Glad you got some sunshine. We have had a beautiful week here, after all the rain last week, it has been wonderful. Pictures are great can't wait to see them all. Some great ones for your wall gallery.

Love you both, have fun, see you soon.
Sandi

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