West Side Story.

Hello

So after visiting the NZ fighter pilots museum (I never realised the extent of the fighting in the Pacific that NZ was involved in) we headed out on the Haast Pass road for the West Coast. This is what Steve and I have been waiting for, for a while, getting the the Bach and relaxing for a week doing absolutley nothing except for reading books, swimming and ejoying the sun, Only it didn't quite turn out that way!

Well we headed up the coast in pretty short order really as we wanted to spend as much time as possible at the bach. We did stop off at Franz Josef and Fox Glacier although we didn't get to see much as the cloud cover was down pretty low, it was good to see some glaciers though (Hence my university nickname 'Ice Boy' for my obsession with the powers of ice). However we did see Mt Cook finally in all its majesty one evening with the falling sun lighting up it's face!

Well after leaving a rather wet and dreary Franz Josef we headed straight up the coast towards the bach stopping off in Greymouth for some supplies along the way. We went all out thinking that this was going to be it one week at an awesome beach hut, I mean we even bought steaks! I tell you thats is definately saying something seen as we have been skimping it for soo long. So stupidly after we'd purchased all this food did we decide to call the guy to see if the bach was free, guess what, it wasn't! ohh no! What were we going to do with all of this food!

We headed up the coast and stayed in the bach for one night as we figured that we might as seen as it was free til tomorrow. What an awesome place right on the beach, no electricity, no gas, no nothing, just water from the local creek, and a coal range for heating and hot water. We spent our time thinking of a contingency plan which involved driving a few hundred K's up the coast and back to Karamea.

So the next day heading off in terrible weather we reached Westport by late afternoon and decided it a wise idea to stay just for the night, at least so that we could put all of our food in the freezer. Westport itself was not worth a visit so we just spent our time reading indoors.

The next day heading up to Karamea we were finally blessed with sunshine! Its a lovely part of New Zealand, as far north up the west as you can go, we spent the next few days camping on the beach, checking out so rather cool caves in the middle of the woods and going on a trek to a backcountry hut up a lovely rainforest valley. Whilst we were up there we met three Canadian guys and invited them to the bach in a few days time if they were around.

Steve and I headed back to the bach as soon as it was available motoring it in short order only stopping for one night on the way in a beautiful gorge just outside of Charleston.

Wow we were finally here at the bach, sit down and relax. To our great surprise the Candian trio (Kerf, Kenny and Sean) actually turned up on the day that we said we'd be there! We had an awesome three days swimming, fishing, kayaking, and partying on the beach with cheap NZ wine and a huge bonfire. After a week or so of doing abosolutely nothing we headed back up the coast towards Nelson and the Able Tasman National Park.

Adios