Wild Wild West Coast
With the proposal out of the way, a big weight was off Stefan’s chest and a little weight out of his pocket. The next stop on our South Island tour was the wild west coast, frequently referred to as the Wild Wet Coast for the large amount of rainfall it gets: according to Wikipedia, this rainfall occurs “due to the prevailing northwesterly wind pattern and the location of the Southern Alps, which give rise to heavy orographic precipitation.” Whatever that means.
The West Coast, however, has more to offer than torrential downpours and $100 words for boosting your SAT vocabulary (stay tuned for a future post where we’ll get more than our fair share of the former on the North Island, unfortunately without being compensated by the latter). Relatively deserted, the West Coast has one big draw: Franz Josef glacier.
Franz Josef was actually pretty close to our previous location of Twizel as the crow (or more accurately, the rook) flies, but for those of you who remember why we were in Twizel, it was to visit Aoraki Mt. Cook and it + the rest of the Southern Alps stand square in the way of any route between Twizel and Franz Josef. So we had to backtrack around the mountain in the direction of Queenstown in order to head, in the immortal words of Will Smith, straight–to–the Wild, Wild, West.
Twizel > Wanaka
On the way, we stopped by the cute little town of Wanaka, home to the New Zealand famous #ThatWanakaTree. The tree had been vandalized earlier that year for no real reason other than being famous, and it doesn’t seem to be famous for any particular reason other than the fact that its submerged roots make for Instagrammable photos. Even though there was a thick layer of clouds covering Wanaka the day we were there (apparently not an uncommon occurrence according to the locals), it still made for a pretty sight!
Not quite as pretty a sight were our accommodations. Trying to save a bit of money on the trip out to Franz Josef, we stayed in a tiny caravan in a nearly impossible-to-find backyard outside of town.
Under normal circumstances, the extension cord running out the window and the lack of a wifi connection within the caravan wouldn’t have been that big of an inconvenience, but we visited Wanaka on a particularly cold day which was still in the middle of Level 2 lockdown restrictions. Libraries, for example, were open, but all of the furniture was gathered together and roped off like some sort of overstuffed chair post-mosh pit crime scene. For two internet- and heat-starved travelers, this made it exceptionally difficult to find anyplace warm to spend the day and get some time to work.
We wandered up and down the streets, peering in frosted café windows to look for electrical outlets, but the shops in Wanaka (and throughout much of New Zealand in general) are not your spacious US cafés where you can find an inconspicuous corner to soak up wifi for hours in exchange for a $2 cup of tea. Instead, most cafés are tight, elbow-to-elbow seating where you can’t hope for much privacy or for the waiter to not stare daggers at you if you occupy your space much longer than it takes you to consume whatever you’ve paid for.
We did eventually buy some hot chocolate at a more spacious place that had some more secluded booths at the back. It was only after we’d placed our order, however, that we realized there wasn’t a single electrical outlet in the entire café! There were of course some outside, but our fingers would have frozen solid even if we dipped them into our fresh hot chocolate, so we were left with the unfortunate situation of there being no warm place to relax in town or where we were staying.
The inability to recharge our batteries both literally and figuratively was unfortunate as it left us too gassed to truly enjoy an absolutely gorgeous hike near town called Roy’s Peak. We gave it our best shot, hiking up the steep, sheep-studded slopes long enough to break through the eerie mists of the cloud layer covering Wanaka and see the spectacular views beyond. Unfortunately, however, after our week of non-stop hiking around Aoraki Mt. Cook, we didn’t have it in us to make it all the way to the top and enjoy the views there.
Another great find in Wanaka was a place called Puzzling World. Part optical illusions, part interactive museum, Puzzling World fits the bill for ‘entertainment which small children and adults can enjoy in equal measure.’ Some of the highlights were a forced perspective room (the basic filming technique behind the actor scale practical effects in the Lord of the Rings), a room tilted at 30 degrees but designed to look level, and a gigantic outdoor maze which we were thoroughly defeated by.
Wanaka > Franz Josef
As nice as Wanaka was, we were ready to get on with our trip. We headed onward to the West Coast on the completely deserted highway headed that direction. Due to its low population, the West Coast has very few people even under normal circumstances, and we were traveling only a few short weeks after interregional travel restrictions had been lifted. We may have talked about it before, but road tripping in New Zealand is very different from the US! Instead of hundred-mile stretches of straight, multi-lane highways, you have a single, windy, narrow, two-way road surrounded by thick forest on all sides and no place to stop but for the tiny towns every hour or so. Not only is driving on those roads slower going, it’s stressful as well! Not to mention the lack of street lights makes driving after dark a definite no-no. To give you an idea, when planning our trips on GoogleMaps, we tried not to cover more than 3 or 4 hours in a single day; very different from the 8-10 hour hauls people are used to making in the US!
We finally reached the coast, stopping for lunch at a restaurant called the Hard Antler in the town of Haast. This town was named after the same guy who named Haast’s Eagle, a now-extinct bird which supposedly was the largest eagle ever to have existed. Weighing upwards of 30 pounds and with a wingspan reaching almost 10 feet, these eagles preyed upon the 12-foot-tall, 510 pound moa, which unfortunately went extinct soon after people arrived to New Zealand, taking Haast’s Eagle with them. Good job, humans!
Farther up the coast, we stopped by Lake Matheson, known for its beautiful mirror reflection of Mounts Tasman and Cook. And its reputation did not disappoint!
After a very rewarding stop at Lake Matheson, we finished the day we had started in Wanaka by continuing onto Franz Josef township.
Franz Josef
Having arrived at our hostel in Franz Josef for a multi-day stay, we in all honesty spent the majority of that time hoping the so-called Wild Wet Coast would finally live up to its name and give us a bit of rain. After all the hiking and traveling we’d been doing over the past couple of weeks, we were completely pooped! Both of us kept checking the weather reports hoping for just one day of inclement weather to confine us to the hostels cushy chairs and free wifi. But we had the misfortune of nothing but clear blue skies so instead spent our time having to be outside walking around! Humbug.
Quite frankly, the two glaciers which are pretty much the only reason anyone goes to the West Coast–Franz Josef and Fox Glacier–were fairly disappointing in comparison to all the other fantastic sights we’d seen so far. They had apparently receded fairly substantially: several locals said they could walk right up and touch the glaciers as kids, but now they had receded to far away in the distance from the viewpoints. By all accounts, the best way to see them was hiking to the top of the valley and looking down, but every option we found was 7-8 hours and we just did not have that much energy available to us.
Our favorite was in a nearby village called Okarito where we got a fantastic 360 degree view of the coast as well as the Southern Alps.
Franz Josef was an absolutely miniscule town, with effectively one little road running through it. It very obviously lived entirely off tourism, and it’s sad to think how heavily the economic impacts of the pandemic affected the town. We might not have patronized their skydiving or helicopter industry, but we did at least treat ourselves to a couple of restaurants, enjoying some delicious bao and savory pies. We also made use of the massive-but-desolate hostel kitchen to cook ourselves a recent favorite in the form of vegan mushroom reubens.
The wildlife in the area was also fun, as we got to watch multiple keas play with one another on the rooftops. Not to be confused with the furniture store, Ikea, these mischievous thieves are the world’s only alpine parrot and one of the smartest birds in the country. We also visited the local wildlife center and got some one-on-one time seeing a kiwi from just inches away (unfortunately, as kiwi are nocturnal, no photos were allowed, but Dagmar did get in plenty of cooing). Dagmar found a nice coupon offer which gave us a private tour through the kiwi breeding and wildlife management process, along with their tuatara sanctuary.
Tuatara are super cool animals: while they look like lizards, they are technically the sole surviving members of the ‘sphenodon’ genus, a completely different branch of the family. They actually have a third eye which gets covered up as an adult, but which presumably works as a photoreceptor for knowing whether or not they’re in the shade or sunlight. They have an incredibly long lifespan, living well over 100 and not even reaching sexual maturity until their 20s. They are known to cannibalize their own young, and their gender bizarrely depends on the temperature of the soil their eggs hatch in. Climate change once again rears its ugly head here, as warmer soil temperatures have led to population difficulties due to an overabundance of males.
If you want to learn more about this cool critter, you can listen to this episode of a fun podcast called History of Aotearoa New Zealand. This podcast covers the history, myths, and wildlife of New Zealand, and Stefan had a wonderful time listening to its episodes in St. Louis as we prepared for our trip. He even got in touch with the podcast host, who generously offered to meet up for a beer once we got there, but then COVID happened, so…
Greymouth
After several sunny days in Franz Josef, we made our way farther up the coast to the roaring metropolis of Greymouth. With a population of 8,000 people, Greymouth is the biggest city of the entire West Coast area, and we cannot say we were particularly impressed.
In all fairness, this was once again due to a situation similar to the one we had in Wanaka. The promised rain finally hit us in Greymouth, and gathering in libraries was still not as a possibility for quasi-homeless people like ourselves. Even so, there were more broken windows and rundown looking tobacco bars than fancy libraries. The best place we found was a little restaurant where we could plug in our laptops, but we did get a bit of stinkeye from the owners. We determined our 2-day stay was far too long for what the ‘city’ had to offer!
This was exacerbated by our decision to once again wisely save money by staying in a caravan, and oh boy. The tiny place sported a luxurious shower/toilet combination and, according to Dagmar, the host smelled like he had gotten those two options confused several weeks running. Neither of us was brave/desperate enough to see what showering while sitting on a toilet was like.
Post-lockdown, we had taken to playing some occasional Dungeons & Dragons sessions with friends of Stefan’s from Santa Barbara. We decided to hold one of these sessions from the caravan, since we didn’t find ourselves too motivated to continue exploring windy, gross Greymouth. At one point, Dagmar got up for a bathroom break, during which time something unfortunate happened to her character (an 8-foot tall animal-loving jock aptly named ‘Dagmar the Destroyer’). A high-pitched squeal of dismay issued forth from the bathroom, such that Stefan and those listening via videochat assumed she was disheartened by her character’s misfortune.The misfortune, however, turned out to have afflicted the real-life Dagmar, who had rolled a natural 1 on her toilet-paper handling check, and dropped our only roll down the caravan toilet. As riotous as Stefan found this, Dagmar was ready to leave Greymouth after that.
Greymouth > Motueka
We spent two more days traveling up to the northern portion of the South Island. Most notable along the way–and our favorite sight on all of the West Coast–was the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks. According to Wikipedia, these rocks get their unique shape from another Scrabble word, ‘stylobedding,’ which is “created by immense pressure on alternating hard and soft layers of marine creatures and plant sediments.” On top of these amazing formations was the geysers of tidewater shooting out through blowholes and forming double rainbows on every single gust. We had absolutely perfect weather at the perfect time of day, and did our best to capture everything on camera.
We also stopped by Buller Gorge, the longest swingbridge in NZ. We accidentally paid for access to it: stopping alongside the road with Dagmar begging for a bathroom break, Stefan was outside having his first encounter with a weka (which we talk more about in our Abel Tasman post), while Dagmar barged inside and paid who knows how much money just so she could use the bathroom. As we talked about above, road-tripping in New Zealand is a much more isolated experience than in the US, and this includes the almost complete absence of bathrooms along the way!
We stayed the night in a sleepy little area called Longford, where we spent the evening chatting with a nice kiwi couple, and then continued on to the town of Motueka. Dagmar made the mistake of having tea in the morning and was as always dying to go to the bathroom (this was/is a recurring theme of many of our road trips). Just before reaching the town, Stefan made an impromptu stop at a roadside stall to pick up kiwis; it’s common in New Zealand to put fruit baskets/honey/other goods out in an unmanned stand, which cars can then stop at and leave the appropriate amount of money for in a jar. Everything seems to work just fine on the honor system–another little thing to love about the country!
We arrived at our AirBnB only to find that our host hadn’t left the door unlocked or provided instructions on where to find the key. Continuing our run of homeless-person activity, we sat outside in our car trying to message the host with the few bars of WiFi we had been able to scavenge from the house in order to figure out how to get inside. With no response from the host and Stefan’s kiwi-stop costing precious seconds of Dagmar’s bladder’s tolerance, we decided to drive the last couple of blocks into town. Dagmar at this point was in blind desperation for a bathroom, almost crashing the car as we looked for any sign of a place offering one.
At long last, we found the comforting, familiar sight of a Subway (yes…New Zealand has Subway). Pulling into the parking lot, Stefan thought we had made it…he thought wrong. Dagmar looked over with the heartbreakingly woeful look of a puppy doing…well, exactly what she was doing. Stefan, being the ever-supportive boyfriend, said all the comforting words one should in this situation: something to the effect of “Get out of the car! Just do it outside of the car! We have to resell this thing! Not on the seats! NOOOOOO…!”
Flash forward to the next day, both of us were showered, warm, and finally well-rested in a decent AirBnb. We spent that afternoon exploring the tiny town of Motueka, and Stefan answered the initial emails starting to trickle in for teaching in Denver in the fall. These questions were about whether classes should be conducted in person, online, or something in between, and naively assuming the rest of the world was on the same track as the now-recovered, Level 1 lockdown New Zealand, Stefan was very glad that his opinion was overridden by those currently living in the harsh reality of the US.
Overall, we wouldn’t really recommend the West Coast. Particularly considering that, if you travel to New Zealand you’re likely to be short on time, this is something you can safely leave off the to-do list. It’s far off the beaten path, it’s difficult to get to, and the things you can see are nowhere near as spectacular as what’s available in more easily-accessible areas. If you do go, our top recommendations are Lake Matheson and the Punakaiki rocks, but both of those are more roadside stops than actual destinations. We also have heard good things about the train from Christchurch to Greymouth, which is several hours long and offers scenic views without the stress of driving. We considered doing this ourselves all the way back in Christchurch, but the tickets are over $100/person, and having just bought our car, Fitz, it didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. Given the probability that we would have ended up spending all of lockdown in Greymouth rather than beautiful Dunedin, we’re pretty sure we made the right choice!
If you want to know what we did next…you’re in luck! We’ve already published our entry on the Abel Tasman Track, which was our next adventure, chronologically-speaking. Next up in our blog will be our post-Great Walk crossing of the Cook Strait via ferry, our exploration of Picton and Wellington, and Dagmar’s counter-proposal to Stefan!
Thank you for reading! We still owe postcards to last entry’s respondents, but for this entry, if you’d like a postcard, be one of the first 3 people to respond to the following question:
What is one interesting thing you learned, not mentioned in any of our posts, from an episode of the History of Aotearoa New Zealand podcast linked above?
3 Comments
Kay Roberta Dubois
Another entertaining post! Thanks for posting! How did you get into the airbnb without a key?
angelfalls48
Our host finally texted us the entry code!
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