Pancake rocks and Another Glacier

Starting and writing each of these days is getting redundant and rather boring so I thought just to mix things up and maybe make this a bit more fun. I am going to write about this day backwards. Here goes nothing.

Once again we were tired and needed to find a place to stay. We were in a bit more of a urbanized area now so pickins were getting pretty slim. It was a good day and we wanted to end it with a nice little campfire and some roasted hot dogs. Luckily we found a spot that looked like it would get the job done. Once again we found a place that said No Camping and decided it was the perfect place for us to set up. It was a pretty big rest area (thats where we mostly stayed; in rest areas or "picnic areas"). We pulled to the back part of it where there was some trees and and a small hill that lead down to a creek. We parked the Saab behind the trees and set up camp at the bottom of the small hill where we were hidden from the road. The tent went up, a fire was made, hot dogs were roasted and some alcohol was consumed. It was a nice end to a day of heading up the west coast and viewing our last glacier. 

These are the signs we would look for that would indicate a potential camping spot.

We were told by many a kiwi that the drive along the west coast of the south island was going to be beautiful. And I must say it didn't disappoint. Imagine driving along a road where you have the ocean to your left and mountains and rain forest to your right. It was something quite incredible. And don't forget you just got done hiking to view a glacier. It really was impressive. And just to spice things up imagine going and looking at huge rocks shaped like pancakes that were getting smashed into by huge waves. Throw a Weka and an orange popsicle into the mix and you might get something similar to what we experienced.

West Coast pic

Cool grass

This is a Weka, an endemic species to New Zealand.

Popsicle

Pancake rocks (didn't get much of a close up)

The only stop we made along the west coast besides the pancake rocks was in Greymouth. It was a pretty little town with a brewery. We were going to take a tour of the Monteith brewery but we didn't want to spend the money and we wanted to get as close to Nelson as we could (this is where we were

going to go skydiving and we were told it was a very beautiful area). 

But before we got to traveling up the west coast we visited the Franz Joseph glacier. The conditions at this glacier were much better than the last. It was a clear and sunny morning when we walked out to it. We got an even better view of the Franz Joseph glacier as we hiked past the ropes of the "recommended" viewing distance (the pictures may help this make more sense). We climbed up some glacial deposit (which still had some ice underneath it), which brought us up closer for a great view. 

Going past the boundaries

This was the warning but we said FACK it and went for a closer look. I must say it was well worth it

Ok, so now we are all the way back at the beginning of the day. All I have to say is that we woke up, tossed the football around for a bit, I think the girls took a little bath in the lake nearby and we were off to the glacier. We wanted to make it at a decent time because we wanted to make some ground up to Nelson. 

Loading the Saab (Our best pack yet)

Date 4/15/12 (15/4/12)