New Zealand Discoverer
Day Two – 27 February 2012 – Pancake Day
Weather – sun and cloud 18-20
I was up at 3 am but I’m not totally sure that I fell back to sleep. Hate that cause I wake up thinking I didn’t sleep enough. We never did get a wake up call but that didn’t matter. I was watching the clock at 6 am and decided to see if Meercat Manor was on.
Nope. Something about explosions.
I had my luggage out for 7 am with my roommates and we waved down a shuttle and took it down to breakfast. It was a basic buffet. Eggs, sausage, hash browns and the usual other stuff. They ran out at one point and I went back to get some piping hot hash browns.
I seem to be drinking more tea here too. Must be a colonial thing.
The bus showed up for 8 and so did everyone else. Good thing. We have a train to catch. Nellie herded us all on the bus where we picked out our seats. There is a rotation here, but it is unique and I love it.
Get this….each seat has a number above it, but the number is random. It doesn’t start at the front with 1 then 2 then 3. It’s like 14 then 8 then 22 then 4. The numbers don’t change but what happens is we move to the seat with the next number from the one we’re sitting in.
So, for example, my seat was number 9 today. So, tomorrow, I go find seat number 10. It’s three seats behind me and on the other side. For the day after tomorrow, seat 11 is close to the front on the other side again. Best part about this rotation is that you change who is in front, in behind and across from you.
I love it! So, if you end up with a really annoying person in front or behind you, you only have to deal with them for a day. And you get to meet more people on tour.
Hey, TT, consider this for your European tours! LOL
As we set off from our resort, Nellie told us two words that we need to know here: Kia Ora. It’s a greeting in native language that can be hello, good bye or how was your golf game?
Wait, let me check my notes here. Hmmm…
Nellie gave us a rundown of a lot of stuff that we need to know – the usual stuff – while we drove to Darfield to catch the Trans Alpine. While we ride the train, the bus will drive up to Arthur’s Pass and meet us there. Then we will proceed on to the west coast.
Or as Nellie calls it, the Wet Coast.
Yeah. That’s our first and second clue that the helicopter ride is gonna be a crap shoot.
One interesting thing is that optionals are paid for direct to the provider and only as we take the optional. This is great too because we don’t have to decide on an optional that we won’t take for ten days. Nellie told us about the helicopter ride to the glaciers (Franz Josef and Fox) for tomorrow and the “calm” jet boat ride on Wednesday. (As in the jet boat doesn’t do crazy turns etc – the jet is simply the type of propulsion). The helicopter optional gives us three choices. The 20 minute one to just one glacier where you hop out and take pics. The second is 30 minutes. It goes up to one, lands and flies down another. The 40 minute one goes up one, lands, goes around Mt. Cook and comes down the other glacier.
Guess which one I signed up for. Yup. The 40 minute one for a whopping $385.
But as Nellie says….seize the day.
So, I seized it and am holding it for ransom. For $385.
We arrived at the Darfield train station where our driver, John, gave us a quick talk on the bus and told us the toilet was there for our convenience. He just asked that we just make local calls and hold the international ones for the rest stops.
Especially important for people in seats 3, 22, 18 and 8.
Heh.
At about 9 we boarded the train and found our seats then learned that there was an outdoor car, and being who I am, I made a bee-line for it, camera in hand. Turned out to be half an outdoor car, so there was a bit of jostling for pictures. So nice when people can rotate for pictures but you always get one that will stand there and not let you in, even when you ask.
Dude. Seriously.
I wasn’t sure what time we were getting in and went back to my seat (like six cars back) and found out we had another half hour. Darn. The scenery improved considerably too. It was a lot like the train ride into Machu Picchu.
At about 10:30, we arrived at Arthur’s Pass and found John waiting for us. We drove a short distance to a cafe for a morning tea.
Yeah, they don’t call it a coffee break. They’re all about tea. A colonial thing I know all too well.
I came across the Ginger Beer someone had told me to try. Woah! Holy ginger, batman. Much more ginger in that than in our ginger ale. I couldn’t finish it. I could barely start it!
At 11:00, we hopped back on the bus and started for Greymouth, the largest town on the coast. It’s a town of 13,000 at the mouth of the Grey river. Nellie gave us a talk as we went telling us that Arthur’s Pass was named for Arthur Dudley Dobson who was the first European to find a pass through the Southern Alps.
We turned off for the scenic route around Lake Brunner, a lake named for a famous surveyor who discovered seams of coal in the area. He was the guy who named the Grey River after the NZ governor of the time.
We came across some interesting cows en route.
I just call them ice cream sandwich cows.
We arrived in Greymouth around 1 pm where we had a chance to have lunch. I went to Subway and had a really good sub. The bread wasn’t as thick as the stuff we get at home. Then I went off to look around and take some pics.
I have to admit, I hate crossing the streets here. I’m constantly looking both ways. The hardest part is when a car pulls into the street you’re crossing or pulls out of a parking spot along the street – then that “look right” reminder going through my head doesn’t seem to work. I picked up a NZ ball cap (before my nose burned off) and an ice cream and waited by the bus, safely on the sidewalk.
From Greymouth, we made the 1 hour drive (gotta love these short distances!) to Punakaki and the Pancake Rocks.
These are formations on the coast where limestone and the softer mudstone made unique patterns as the softer mudstone eroded away much faster than the limestone.
There are even blow holes and I got a great video of one here.
The walk up from the road can take an hour if you take your time, or 20 minutes if you rush.
I stopped to take videos of the blowholes and of the waves below. The noise was deafening.
Beautiful spot!
Guess where our hotel is?
Yeah. A kilometre or so down the road right on the beach where we all have beach facing rooms and can watch the huge waves hitting the beach about a hundred metres away.
Better than a villa!
We all checked in and I got hooked back up to the internet. Twenty dollars for four hours.
Yeah, pick yourself back up off the floor. I did say $20 for 4 hours.
Luckily, I can log out and save the time and there’s no size limits, so I can upload a couple day’s worth of photos. My room is large with two full beds, fridge, kettle and condiments, tv with 7 channels (just watched the Oscars….The Artist? Huh?). Also an ironing board and iron. Oh, and a guest laundry with coin operated machines down by reception.
No safe again. I’m sensing a theme.
First things first. Checked my email and sat back to enjoy my “fix.”
Then I went out to check the beach where I found an area of pancake rocks that went along one side of the beach. So, I was like a kid in a playground, jumping from rock to rock. I took pics and video of the pounding surf. Too bad the sun isn’t out. I can just imagine the colour of the water with a bright sun.
I waved at Australia, too.
I made my way back to my room and got ready for a buffet dinner for 7 pm. I like that. It just means we can get in and get out and get to bed so much faster than a sit down meal.
But it turns out that it wasn’t a buffet. It was a sit-down meal with set menu. We had a choice of tomato soup or Caesar salad for an appetizer. For the main meal, you got chicken, lamb or turbot and dessert was Mud Cake (I didn’t notice the other desserts. I stopped reading at Mud).
Absolutely delicious. The tomato soup came with a bun that must have just been out of the oven it was so hot. The soup was a perfect spicy and delicious – which is saying something as I’m not a big fan of tomato soup. I almost started to lick the bowl. My chicken was incredibly tender and full of flavour. They like their spice as the potato side was a bit spiced up. The Mud cake melted in my mouth like a fudge brownie.
It took 2 hours. We had hoped to see the sun go down but the clouds outlasted the daylight. Nellie tells us a high pressure system will clear out the clouds for a perfect day tomorrow for the helicopter ride.
Hasn’t hit me quite yet. I’m going up in a helicopter tomorrow! A helicopter over snow capped mountains.
Have you ever seen the movie Alive!?
Think I’ll take along some extra granola bars.
Go to Day Three
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