Up and down the Coast

On the morning before we set out on the road in our own (or rented) car we had a little bit of lie in and then quickly packed our bags to leave the room.

Check out time usually is 10 am here in New Zealand (and Australia as well).

We did make it just about and left our luggage at a sort of storage room of the little Motel.

Unfortunately the kettle in our room had leaked over night and we charged our phones and laptops right next to it on the kitchen shelf.

My Dads phone must have been soaking in the water for hours, so we had to take it all apart and let it dry off for a few hours.

Following the suggestion of Dave from yesterday we walked down to the little Museum in Greymouth. It had around 20000 historic Photographs of the area, the gold and coal rush, shipping, mining, floods and general way of life back in these days.

There were not just photos but also some exhibition pieces, like an old dive suit or a phone exchange. Not the Smithsonian but a very nice little Museum for this town.

After the hour we spent in there we had worked up the required appetite to visit Maggies Cafe (another suggestion of Dave from the pub) for breakfast.

This place had been finalist in the "Best Cafe of New Zealand" competition in 2013 and 2014 and I expected it to be similar to the Good ole News Cafe in Blackrock .... but..... it disappointed impressively. I had a chicken sandwich which was not anything special, service was alright but all in all it was an average cafe. We had much nicer breakfasts along the way in NZ already.

Anyway, it didn't hurt. After this we picked up the car at the Train station. The Avis employees were not as friendly and helpful as the GoRental people from the north Island and when we spotted some chipmarks around and wanted to point them out they refered to paragraph 24 a on the contract which stated: "chipmarks are not considered damage". Fair enough then.

Mom had a look at a shop where we have seen a nice T-Shirt and it even was reduced by 30 %, but unfortunately it was reduced to 90 $.

Even for a Merino Wool T-shirt this is still quite steep, so we passed.

When we reassembled the phone we noticed there as some mist in the camera lens but with some aircon blowout this had evaporated quickly and when turning it on all came up good. Looks like we saved the phone.

Since we were all mobile again with our car we drove up north along another great coast road to the Pancake rocks.

A quick walk around the Pancake rocks gave us a good idea.

Scientist are not fully sure how these rocks, that looked like stacked pancakes had formed but they sure looked interesting.

Followed up with a coffee we then left and drove south, through Greymouth and on to Okarito to find as this was suppose to be good place to do some Kayaking, but unfortunately we didn't find any accommodation and had to drive on.

There was a great, very basic camp ground and it would have been a good place to use one of these Jucy Vans that we had seen everywhere.

They are usually Toyota HiAce's or Previa's that have been refitted with beds, small kitchens and camping equipment.

These little vans don't seem to be that much more expansive than a normal car an are a real alternative. You could use them two days to sleep cheap, carry around you food and cook it and then every now and then when you need a shower you can park them easily like a normal car at motel and have a bit of Luxury.

Maybe next time.

Our next chance for a bed was either Franz Josef Glacier or Fox Glacier. From what we read, Fox Glacier was a smaller, more relaxed town which we preferred, so we drove straight through to there and quickly found a nice Lodge.

It was new, log cabin finished to a very high quality standard and there as a nice restaurant right next door.

There we had a great dinner. I feasted on a lovely Lamb chank served very fancy, standing up on a plate, and as it was a bit of small portion I had Spare ribs for desert. I felt a bit like a posh lion that evening.

To digest this great meal we decided to go for a little walk around town, but didn't get very far as it started to drizzle - and as we had travelled south quite a bit now it was getting colder as well.

Back at our logcabin we heated up with a cup of tea (just the open fireplace was missing) and caught up (only a little bit) on the writing.

Later we found out that Dads Phone didn't charge any more.

Seems like the water had corroded the contacts of the charger socket.