West Coast

The last two days consisted of a lot of driving and a lot of rain. I headed from Motueka to Greymouth which is straight down the west coast and us populated by only 1% of New Zealands total population. 

Before I left, I had a fabulous home cooked breakfast made by my South Korean friend. It was a stir fry if sorts with egg, pumpkin, onions, and kaikoura which is a type of seafood that he caught the previous day!

Just as a general guide to driving in NZ, tack on at least one hour to any drive time you're given. I was curious every time a kiwi explained that Wellington was "about 4-6" hours away or Queenstown is about 3-5. I wondered where the two hour cushion came into play but I quickly learned it was up on the side of the mountain. The speed limit is almost always 100 k/hour. However, if you want to make it alive to your destination you probably spend half of the drive at around 60 severing around the mountains trying to keep up. Although the scenery is gorgeous, it is exhausting driving here.

I made it to Punakaiki Pancake Rocks and Blow holes after a few hours and stopped to have a look at this beautiful area. These formations have been created in the Tasman Sea and look like a stack of pancakes!

Finally, I made it to Greymouth, which wasn't the most exciting town, but it gave me a place to sleep before my travels the next day.

Early in the am I drove down to Fox Glacier which is one of two glaciers in NZ. It's amazing because it is very close to sea level and constantly changing size. When I got to the tour, I noticed two guys that I had seen previously at two other stops on my trip so I figured it was time for us to be friends. Turns out, they are just travelling together after meeting in the north island. One of the guys, Patrick is from Ireland but worked for the past year in Sydney and the other, Michel is from the Netherlands and was in Malaysia for work and decided to extend his trip. 

When I started talking to them, a girl in our group called me out on my American accent. She is originally from Boston, when to University of Maryland and taught at St Timothys which is a private school in Baltimore! Very crazy. Now she teaches in Cairo although I'm not sure she had heard about the current tragedies when we were on our tour.

We had a great few hours climbing on the ice and learning about how it changes throughout the day. While it had rained most of the night and morning, the rain let up for the walk which was much appreciated. After, the guys were headed to Queenstown, just like I was so we made plans to meet up later that night. What we didn't realize is that it would take us nearly six hours (google maps had it at 3 hours 50 minutes) to get there. Mind you, it monsooned for 5 of those hours.

Anyway, we made it and it was easy to see right away why everyone loves this place. It's a cute town situated on the mountain overlooking a lake with amazing views all around. The actual town is small but there are always tons of tourists skiing or doing other fun things.

We had a great dinner and met up with my roommates later. We are all nearing the end of awesome trips here, so we made a lot of plans to do all the exciting things that Queenstown has to offer in the few days we have here!