NZ - Lake Matherson

After a wonderful nights sleep in the cottage, we were a bit lazy and didn’t vacate the room in time, so got a reminder, meaning we had to rush breakie a bit.

We headed down to Lake Matherson, which is also known as the reflective lake, as on a still day, you can see the perfect reflection of Mt Cook in the water. It looks amazing, but you have to be quite lucky to see it, and there has to be absolutely no wind. Unfortunately, there was a slight breeze (both today and last night), so we didn’t get to see it in it’s full glory ;(

It was still a beautiful place, and was a really nice walk. Lots of nice plants, trees and loads of birds singing. Its a very peaceful and relaxing place, and you cant help but come away from here smiling :-D

We eventually decided to continue our journey. This area is just another example of the wonderful natural diversity that NZ has to offer. Every area is so incredibly different, not just from each other, but from anywhere else in the world.

We are now beginning the trek to the north island, and we aim to be in Wellington tomorrow eve or the following morning. We wanted to go via the East coast where you can see whales and swim with dolphins. However, time restraints mean it will all be a bit rushed, so we decided to head to the Blenheim wine region instead, which is close to Piction and the ferry port.

So today, we must head north to West Port. It’s a fairly long drive, and had a few stops along the way.

First stop was Hokitika Gorge, a couple of hundred k’s down the road. This was a really beautiful spot, where you take a short walk down through a forest, and across a swing bridge, to the milky blue river. It’s a gorgeous, peaceful spot with lovely coloured fast flowing water, surrounded by rocks to go climbing on.

Marc went exploring, and Ev stood and watched for a while. Eventually the sand flies drove her insane and to avoid further nibbles she headed back to the bridge. When she reached the swing bridge, Marc waited on the rocks to take a photo. However, some Americans took residence on the centre of the bridge, so the photo op was gone. Marc did wait for them to go, but the sand flies go to him as well. Typically, as soon as he left, so did the Yanks ;)

Next stop was the pancake stax. These are so named because the rock formations look like a stack of pancakes. Scientists still don’t know to this day how the rocks were formed – rock eating animals, wind, rain, etc. These are quite impressive, along with a rock bridge and cove. There are some great views out across the ocean too.

Someone who had been looking at one of the cliff faces for some time had come up with a variety of pictures that the rocks had formed and when you looked at it a certain way, you too could see them… it basically consisted of a King at a feast – amazing.

As we drove away we passed a beach, so we stopped, and jumped out for a walk along the sand. This is where Ev got her birthday card, as Marc wrote a message in the sand, aah how sweet :D

Our final stop for the night was West Port, the place itself is fairly none descript, with nothing of note there really. It’s a quiet little town and there was no one around. The hostel we stayed at was a nice, cute place and we were the only ones there. And it was more like someone’s house than a hostel. The best thing about West Port was the supermarket – this little shop in this little town sold South African goodies :D Evelyn was so taken by surprise she insisted on buying one of each of the items… being pronutro, chocits, tennis biscuits!!

We didn’t hang around for too long the next day, and as it turned out we couldn’t anyway. As soon as we shut the door to the house to leave, we were locked out. We wanted to leave some money for internet use (we’re honest people), but couldn’t get back in, so we stuffed a couple of $$’s through the gap of the open window ;)

So, we headed off to Blenheim (the wine region close to Picton), our last stop on the South Island. En route we visited the grossly over-rated Murchinson swing-bridge, which is advertised as being the longest swing bridge in the world. It costs about $5 pp to enter – For our money we took about 2mins to cross the bridge (with Marc inevitably bouncing the bridge to scare Evelyn). Right, what’s next then!! The owners try and make it a bit more interesting, and you can pay an extra $5 to take the flying fox back to the other side, but it’s a bit tame after seeing the Zambezi one ;)

As we were here, we made the most of it, and explored the area on this side of the bridge, going on a couple of little walks. There is a bit of history about and the little info boards explained that the area got flooded in the early 1900’s and wiped out a village, there’s also an old “gold mine” which is nothing more than a hut, and a few abandoned tractors. There was also a really bad quake here and you could see the gap that the quake created.

When we went back to the bridge & started to cross back over we decided to wait a bit as there were people crossing from the other side. But soon a big fat German woman (speculating nationality, but with a stern look like that, she had to be) and her family decided to be impatient and cross from our side, as she passed us she said “we can fit passed them, we’re not fat!” So whilst Helga was crossing we watched a boy impersonate Superman on the flying fox.