During a break from the rain on the Queen’s Birthday weekend we drove out to Hokitika Gorge for a short hike. The Hoki Gorge is renowned for its bright turquoise river. The unusual colour is brought about by a mix of glacial meltwater and a rich mix of minerals, greywacke and schist powder washed down from the ancient glaciers. Here’s what it should look like (courtesy of the Hokitika visitor website):

But thanks to the prolonged heavy rainfall in the area recently, this is what it looked like on Saturday:

The water was a strange milky grey colour. Fortunately on a previous visit we’ve seen the river at its turquoise best and despite the grey colour the Hoki Gorge was really beautiful. We saw lots of friendly little fantails – these guys don’t have a natural predator so they’re pretty fearless and they follow humans and livestock around because of the all the sandflies and other tasty bugs that get stirred up by movement. Any creature that eats sandflies is a friend of mine! Note Eloise’s large gloves – these were for protection against sandflies. The day was rounded off with a delicious meal at the Honey Cafe at Kumara Junction.

Some more photos from the day at Hoki Gorge, including the nice rata blossoms (prevalent around Christmas):

Around Easter time, the New World supermarket chain ran a colouring-in competition for kids. Eloise’s entry won a special “Highly Commended” prize and she was presented with a massive Easter egg and a gift card of her choice. She chose a gift card for The Warehouse, which has the largest selection of Nintendo games in town. No prizes for guessing what she spent her gift card on! Eloise’s poster is on display at the supermarket.

We’ve been neglecting the blog in recent weeks. Instead of writing a bunch of posts about everything we’ve been up to, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves:

 

Douglas and one of his girls. Douglas is a special Asian breed of chicken and he’s the boss at Shantytown. He has a number of girls that follow him around and in this particularl photo, Douglas is about to take his girls into the Shantytown restaurant for a feed. It must be a Hair-themed evening at the restaurant as Douglas and his girls are wearing some serious flares.

 

 

 

Eloise and her friend Ashlyn had a blast at Shantytown – it’s a great place for kids to run amok and have an adventure.

 

 

 

 

Recent pics from Punakaiki (Pancake Rocks) to give you an idea of the recent wild weather on the West Coast (any blurry photos are the result of the wind buffeting the camera!):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent another weekend at the bach at 9 Mile Beach, which included collecting mussels for a delicious creamy mussel soup. Lots of starfish on the rocks too:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update: Sarah has just pointed out to me that we haven’t been neglecting the blog so much – she wrote a post about the wet & windy day at Punakaiki already! My bad, enjoy the additional photos anyway.

We went for a ride over to Hokitika today for a change of scenery.  The sun was out and it was really beautiful on the beach.  So nice to have had a bit of sunshine and warmth today after endless days of rain and cold weather.

Eloise found a flock of seagulls on the beach which she kept sneaking up on and scaring them into taking off.  We got some lovely photos of her running around after them.

I think it did us all good to take a break and get out for some fresh air.  It was awesome to see the snow capped mountains in the distance whilst we were enjoying the sun on the beach!

After an insanely early start to Christchurch for a couple of appointments today, I had a leisurely drive back to the West Coast in some beautiful autumn sunshine – a very welcome break from weeks of torrential rain and gale-force winds. After stopping briefly to admire the famous Castle Hill rocks (scene of the Great Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia movie), I managed to have a quick recce around Cave Stream which is near the surreal Castle Hill Station. I’d love to go back armed with wetsuit, headlamp and a flask of hot coffee to walk/swim through the length of the main cave system. Then further down the adjacent Broken River and up a tributary, one can apparently see evidence of ancient seashells in the limestone cliffs – remember, this is in the Southern Alps at approximately 1400m altitude. Beyond Cave Stream there were a couple of stops along Arthurs Pass. All the way through the winter-brown Southern Alps were signs of the first snow on the peaks. Too much beauty to capture with a camera.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Castle Hill Station (a “station” is a large sheep farm).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos taken at Cave Stream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos taken on Arthurs Pass. I’ve previously written about the very steep gradient of the pass – note the tyre chains on the digger!

 

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