The West Coast...Via Bus!

I love seeing the clouds rolling over the mountains

Alright, so this might sound like a little bit of a boring post, but honestly one of my favorite parts of my trip was just staring out the window on the bus ride between cities.  I took the bus from Nelson to Franz Josef on Tuesday (the 10th), which takes the route along the west coast of the south island.  If you refer to the map in my first "travel" post you'll notice that Franz Josef is quite a ways from Nelson, which is true: I sat on the bus for almost 10 hours watching the scenery go by.  I lucked out a little bit for my bus ride, it was the only day that really rained on my trip and I was in a snug bus the whole way!  None of my plans got screwed up at all =)

Like I said, it might sound really boring but one of the coolest parts about traveling through New Zealand is just driving around.  It's like they tried to jam as much scenery into the small place possible so every hour or so the bus would stop at a scenic look out and you could see all sorts of beautiful rock formations and cool skylines.

On the bus ride to Franz Josef we stopped at a couple places. We stopped both in Greymouth and Hokitika to pick people up so I didn't get much of a chance to explore those cities. It also didn't help that it was raining while we were in those places. Those were the cities we stopped in, but we also stopped at two scenic lookouts on the way there. They were both by the Tasman Sea coast (which is the sea between New Zealand and Australia). The first was called the Pancake Rocks, and it was this gorgeous little walk past these strangely formed rock outcroppings in the ocean.

The rocks look like they're just piled on one another, but they're actually formed by the constant build up of sediment when the waves crash against the rocks.  They look really crazy up close, and it's a little hard to see but all of the rocks out in the water look the same as the one above but at a massive scale.  We only had about 15 minutes to look around, so I power walked this trail by the sea and the cliffs.  It doesn't look like it, but it was incredibly warm out.  We all got off the bus and were just hit with this wall of humidity.


So that was the first of my bus rides, the ride itself was fairly relaxing, just listening to audiobooks and staring out the window.  The route was mostly along the coast and some parts through the countryside, getting further into the mountains the closer we got to Franz Josef and rather rainy the whole time.

Now I'm going to skip Franz Josef for the moment so I can get all my bus ride stories out of the way.  So I spent about 2 days in Franz Josef, getting in around 4:30ish on Tuesday and the left about 1:30 on Thursday, but that's a story for next post!

So the ride from Franz to Wanaka (my next destination) doesn't look that long on paper, but the thing is that the route goes through the mountains so it was a really windy road, going up and up through a pass and then down through the mountains and between two lakes to get to Wanaka.  Along the way we stopped in Fox Glacier (pictured right), which is similar to Franz Josef but about an hour away.  It's a small town with a giant mountain in the distance.







All along the way after that the clouds cleared up and we drove through this gorgeous pasture country.  All I could think of as I looked around was that those are the luckiest cows ever.  And the farmers--Wisconsinites would kill for a view like that!  I wish we had mountains back home; it would make our pastureland so much more epic looking.

 Further along we ended up driving along the coast again and we stopped at a scenic lookout where you could look out one point and it was a straight shot across the Tasman Sea to Australia, and then you could look out the other side of the point and it was a straight shot to the South Pole.  They're both thousands of miles away, but it was cool to think "if my eyes were mega powerful I could see to Aussie-land!"  Completely irrational but there you are.

 We stopped at a salmon hatchery along the way too, but it wasn't cool enough for me to bother taking pictures.  It was exactly what you think of when you go to a fish hatchery: fish swimming in circles, but with an expensive restaurant attached.  I think it was one of those "required stops" to improve the local economy and give the driver an excuse to have a cup of coffee.

The last stop we made before going straight to Wanaka was at this awesome Waterfall.  We stopped and then you got to hike down a small trail and there's this huge waterfall only about 300m from the road.  It was a gorgeous sight, and I would've loved to hike around the river more if I hadn't been on a bus.  New Zealand's just like that: stop in one place on the side of the road and you'll see a mountain or some cool rocks, or a waterfall.  There's so many little things to look at!


We arrived in Wanaka as the sun was setting, but to get there you have to drive along the lake.  The road actually goes by two big lakes: Wanaka and Hawea.  If you're just in the town the lake doesn't look that big, but that's because it's ringed by mountains so the lakes are funnily shaped and curve around the mountains so you can't actually see the whole thing in one go.  The views from the bus were specactular though!  Here's my final image for the post, next time it'll be fun Franz Josef tramping tales!