Glaciers Part 2 and the West Coast

After our day of hiking on the Fox glacier, we drove back to the town of Franz Josef Glacier where we were staying at a YHA hostel. YHA hostels are affiliated with Hostel International was the one where we were staying was fantastic with clean rooms, a big kitchen and dining area, stone fireplace and lots of people. During our trip I would see people making incredible meals in the hostels which were far more complex than those that I make at home. Of course there were people making beans on toast, but next to them would be 50 year old women, sipping wine and making five course meals. In the past, I have just thrown together something to eat in the hostel, but seeing other travelers and at Sue’s urging, my attitude towards simple meals has changed into a desire to cook meals that are a bit more rewarding.

The next day, we checked out of our hostel and drove over to the Franz Josef glacier. Like the Fox glacier, the Franz Josef was once more extensive before it receded, but now it is growing again. We started off the day by walking up towards the terminal face. We had to pass through a chained off area with signs warning that the river had shifted its course and that it was advised not to proceed. We and everyone else took it under consideration and then continued onward. The only problem was that the path had been washed out in one point, but the water was shallow easily walked across. However, we didn’t get too close to the glacier.

We spent the rest of the morning walking on trails around the area including one trail that gave us fantastic views of the glacier across a still pool of water. We had hoped to continue to follow the trail up the side of the valley to get better views, but after crossing a suspension bridge we met two trampers walking the other direction who warned that the trail was closed due to landslides. Our hikes took us up a nearby hill from which we could see both glaciers, but unfortunately not in the same view.

In the afternoon, we set out for our next destination which was Greymouth, further north up the West Coast. Along the way, we stopped at the little town of Hokitika in hopes of getting the chance to see Kiwi’s at a reserve in town. However we arrived just as the reserve was closing. Hikitika saw its heyday during the gold rush of the 1860s when 6000 people flooded the streets and the treacherous port became the country’s busiest for a time. Today, the town is smaller and dairy and logging have replaced gold as the primary industry, but it is still an interesting town to wander about for a time. There are an abundance of stores in town offering greenstone (jade and the softer bowenite). The Maori revered greenstone and the stores typically offer greenstone carved into Maori designs. Raw greenstone can be found in the area, it is forbidden by law to export greenstone and mining for it in national parks is prohibited.

Every fall, Hokitika is the host of the Hokitika Wildfoods festival which gives daring visitors the chance to try all sorts of wild food such as huhu grubs, westcarots (local snail), gorse flower wine, spagnum moss candy floss, high protein earthworms, blue fin tuna, scollops, whisky sausages, mussels, possum and bambi burgers, kumara patties, home made ice cream, pigs trotters, jellied or toffee grasshopper, West Coast whitebait and the list goes on. You can read more at: www.wildfoods.co.nz/wildfoods/foodfest/

The town’s visitor’s center is located in an old building that was once a Carnegie Library. I had no idea that these were outside of the US as well. But it turns out that of the 2,509 Carnegie Libraries funded between 1883 and 1929, 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 156 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, and Fiji. Inside of the buildings was the ever helpful information office, there was a gallery currently showing the works of a local photographer. The photographer was a German who had settled in the area and he was putting on the show as a way to thank the community for its support of him. All of the photographs were of local subjects and he had used a process called Giclée (pronounced zhee-klay) to print them. The Giclée printing process creates images that look like paintings from the digital images. The artist had clearly identified his photos as being Giclée which is honorable since I have seen other photographers who have not, leaving the patrons thinking that they are buying an extraordinarily detailed painting. The photographer’s name is Jeurgen Schacke and we wound up having a really good conversation about photographs and New Zealand.

From Hokitika, we proceeded north up to Greymouth where we would spend the night. I had booked us a room at the hostel that I had raved about back in November when I had traveled with my friend Nils. We had been impressed by the tidiness and details of the hostel including made up beds and hot muffins. I was really looking forward to the stay and had talked up the hostel quite a bit which made the disappointment of our experience all the worse. Check in was fine, but once we were showed our room, the problems began. The room stank of mildew. It wasn’t noticeable at first because when we arrived the door and windows were opened. But, of course we shut the door once we put down our bags and so the smell built up while we were out cooking dinner. I spoke with the owner and it turned out that a radiator in the room had been slowly leaking. It must have leaked quite a lot of water by the time it was discovered and repaired. We asked for another room, but the hostel was fully booked. In hindsight, we should have packed our bags and left, but we had already eaten and were tired and decided that since our heads would be close to the massive, open windows, we would be ok. We asked for a fan, but it never arrived which is unfortunate because the breeze that we needed to push air into the room never came. It was a horrible night and I will never stay at the Global Village again. Nor will my friends (hopefully) after I got done berating the hostel once I got back.

The next morning we continued our drive up the West Coast and unfortunately, it was a day of typical West Coast weather. I had no idea how lucky I was the first time that I visited the Pancake Rocks that I had a beautiful, blue sky. My visit with Sue was the third time that I have visited the Pancake Rocks and two of the three times it was raining. It is a shame the weather was bad because I really like the Pancake Rocks. And the drive north from the Pancake rocks to Westport is spectacular in good weather with great views of the large waves crashing on the wild coast. But, at least we still go to take photos with the road signs warning of penguins crossing for the next 10 kilometers.

Before getting to Westport, we turned the car east and followed the blue-green waters of the Buller River through the Buller Gorge. We opted not to try the 110m long swing bridge over the river or the flying fox and jet boats. The sides of the gorge bear the scars of landslides and we drove past the View of Earthquake Slip where in 1968 a earthquake loosed a landslide that actually dammed the river for several days before the water finally broke through the obstacles. As soon as we entered the mountains, the rains stopped and the sun appeared in the sky because the rain clouds were trapped by the mountains behind us.

We continued on along the same route over which the bus that I had ridden in 2004 had taken until we arrived at the town of Nelson on the Tasman bay. In 2004, I had been told that property prices had doubled after 9/11. There had always been a large population of people from the US who live in Nelson for half the year during the New Zealand summer. Since 9/11, a lot of these people have now decided to live in Nelson year round which has sparked a housing shortage. As we drove into Nelson, we had seen new, luxury apartments being built along the coast. Most of these apartments are sold before they are even built. Two years on, it appeared that the housing crunch was continuing with more condos being built on the coast.

We checked into The Bug which was a much better hostel with a friendly staff, free internet and a fantastic kitchen. Much better. We had chosen to spend two nights in Nelson so as to use the city as a base for exploring the nearby Abel Tasman National Park which we would do the next day.