Arthur's Pass and the West Coast part 2

After driving up the east coast from Dunedin in the rain, we stopped at Ashburton for the night at Coronation Park. It was a weird little place with a cramped lawn for camping and mostly semi-permanent residents. Not exactly welcoming... The next morning we decided to skip Christchurch since the reports were that the downtown was still totally cordoned off and full of rubble. Instead we took the road to Methven and got some coffee at a little cafe while it rained. Then we took the road through the very pretty Rakaia Gorge and then hooked up with the Great Alpine Highway SH-73 that runs through Arthur's Pass to the west coast. We drove up to Flock Hill Station, near Craigieburn Park, but they were closed for the day since someone left a tap running and their water tanks had been emptied. Bummer! Instead we turned around and went back to Springfield to stay at Smylies, a very cute and homey place with a giant library of books and dvds (half in Japanese, but still there were a lot) to hang out while, you guessed it, it rained.

The next day we got a short break from the wet weather and we stopped in the Castle Hill area to walk around the crazy limestone formations.

After that we got ourselves a spot at Flock Hill (now open), then drove to Craigieburn for a walk to Helicopter Hill. We swear the last bit of track is longer than the 500 m advertised. The view was rather nice and we took the long way back to the car on the way down.

The next day we took a walk along the Bealey Spur track. The weather was not quite as nice as the day before, with some rain blowing through. Bealey Spur is supposedly the place to go though, since it's on the east side of the pass and the rain was coming in from the west. After a bit of walking in the rain, it started to really rain and when our pants were thoroughly wet we decided to turn back before it got truly awful. Good thing too, when we got to the car the rain was even worse. We returned to Flock Hill and found a truckload of teenagers on some school trip. After enduring the melodrama for a few hours while it rained, we escaped to the bar at the main lodge for adult beverages.

The next day the rain was supposed to hold off on our side of the pass until about 1 or 2pm. We took our chances and went to the Bealey Valley track on the north side of Arthur's Pass village (but still southeast of the actual pass). We got some decent not-rain for weather, but the creeks were up and we had to turn around when the crossings started getting a bit deep and wide, in case we got caught in the rain. Good thing too, when we returned to Flock Hill around 2pm it started pouring.

And it rained. And rained. And rained. Thankfully the building was watertight and fairly warm (with the heater on) and nearly deserted. We hung out, cooked a nice dinner, and chilled while it rained. Eventually we had to go back to the car, but the grass was so wet we decided to leave it in the gravel parking lot overnight. It stopped raining around 6am. Seriously, the rain was ridiculous and never-ending.  We thought we'd get a five minute break here or there to rearrange the car for sleeping, but it never stopped.

The next morning, we got going in a rare bit of half-sun, but not more than about 15 km later we ran into (literally) some rockfall. The rocks took a tire, so we pulled over to attach our spare. The very first car that passed us also stopped to help (super friendly NZ!), before we even had the car jacked up all the way, and we found out that our tire iron only worked on 4 of the 5 nuts. I guess the story is that the 5th nut is different to prevent tire theft. Lot of good that did us. We flagged down another car who had one of those 4-pronged tire irons and got the last nut off and the donut on. Thanks random strangers!

Our choices for destination were Greymouth or Christchurch, since nowhere else nearby would have a reliable source of tires. Either was about 120 km away. We picked Greymouth since that was the direction we were going anyway. Wow, what a fun road! Perhaps we have mentioned that it had been raining a bit recently. This day, not 10 minutes after resuming driving, the rain came in again accompanied by "gale force" winds of about 100 km/h in the high passes. Lucky for us, we were crossing the highest pass across the Southern Alps, followed by the crazy steep Otira Gorge with 16% grades and exposed bridges. Waterfalls were sheeting off the cliffs, rain was blowing up (up!!) the road in huge waves, and at one point we came to a bridge which was now a ford. We weren't going to cross it at all, but the oncoming traffic did just fine and we saw it was only a few inches of water. [this was one of the many, many one-lane bridges in NZ.] It was a bit scary though, even for just a few inches it was moving really quickly and the car had to struggle a bit to get through.

Eventually (we were driving really, really slowly) we made it across the pass and through the gorge, and when we reached the foothills the weather slacked to a mix of rain, wind, and sun--sometimes all three at once. But still it was a vast improvement over the mountain weather. We got to Greymouth and found the tyre shop that a construction guy along the road had recommended to us. They happened to have a gently-used tire in our size for sale and plenty of time to install it, so we were in and out in about 20 minutes for only $60. Nice!

After a gas stop and a trip to the market, we continued up the west coast along SH-6. Lonely Planet says this is one of the best road trips in the world, and it's pretty darn good. The wind was up and had been blowing for days, so the waves were impressively crashing into the rocky coast. The rivers were all swollen to massive proportions and were gushing down from the hills, accompanied by waterfalls galore. We stopped in Punakaiki for a walk among the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes; these blowholes actually blew. And we stopped a lot along the road to enjoy the scenery. Even gray and misty the coast is beautiful. A quick check of the weather in Punakaiki led us to the conclusion it was time to flee to sunshine, so we blew past Nelson Lakes (forecast: rain, rain, and snow!) and drove into Marlborough to stay at the Top 10 in Blenheim (forecast: some clouds, some sun).  Hellloooooo, wine country!