West Coast

We finally dragged ourselves away from the beloved Wanaka just as the rain and clouds started to set in.  It was a trade off because it would have been nice to travel up the West Coast in fine weather to get the good views, but we didn’t want to spend all of the nice days in the car.  Plus we heard the sand flies were bad.  We still managed to see the glaciers (pronounced glassy-ers) even in the foggy weather:

And travel through small towns where gas literally costs:

We decided not to fill up here and instead take our chances at making it to the next town with the needle just about below the empty line.  Luckily we made it and celebrated by sharing a ham and cheese sandwich and a hard-boiled egg for lunch.

We stayed in a hostel in Hokitika as the wind was incredibly powerful and it was pouring down rain – not the best tent weather.  Hokitika was highly recommended ahead of Greymouth just a bit farther north because there was much more to do there.  After walking around the entire town of Hokitika in about 12 minutes (including entering the more interesting shops), we couldn’t even imagine how little there would have been to do in Greymouth.  We did go up and see the glow worms at night - it started pouring on our walk up to their cove which took longer than we expected and we got soaked - but it was cool to see.  We were in this tiny town the weekend before the Wild Foods Festival, which apparently attracts so many people that all accommodation is booked out months in advance.  People come from all over to try the craziest foods you can think of.  Usually this brings to mind ants and other bugs, maybe some delicacies like beef tongue or heart, and maybe even scorpions or something slightly scary, but we found out that the popular dare the year before was horse semen...  We weren’t too sad to miss out on the festivities.  Plus we were excited to get up to Nelson and do some backpacking!