South Island to North Island

We’ve completed about half of the West coast drive. Here’s what Wikipedia says about this drive: “The
South Island West Coast of New Zealand is a beautiful and scenic drive that offers stunning views of the rugged coastline, green rainforests, and farming areas. The Great Coast Road between Westport and
Greymouth has been named one of the Top 10 Coastal Drives in the world by Lonely Planet [guidebook
and many other sources]. The drive is approximately 370 km long and takes around 5 hours to complete
without stops.”

This western area of NZ is sparsely populated (only 40,000 of the total 4.5 million). The elevation climbs so suddenly that it looks as though God swept God’s hand from left to right--as though sweeping crumbs from a table—and pushed the coast into the mountains.

The day was heavily overcast, but we drove the Great Coast Road with optimism, taking photos at as
many of the pull-outs as possible in the midst of looming rain forest. As per normal on the South Island,
we drove on roads where the driver is always turning the wheel, sometimes at hairpin turns that feel
like we’re making a U-turn. But the beach scenes were spectacular and we were able to have teasers of
glimpses before the heavy clouds once again secreted their treasures. 

Do these mountains/volcanoes/glaciers exist? Do they have tips at the tops? You’ll need to seek those photos online rather than from us.

Pancake Rocks was spectacular for the scenery, the learning, and the opportunity to get out of the car
and walk a meandering circle path through bush to the sea. After a short visit to Westport we went
inland for the night in Murchison at a place called “Off the Beaten Track”. It is just a little burg in sort of the middle of nowhere. So much so that we saw the first sign to warn about the next gas station which was in Murchison being 100 kilometers away.

We took another day to get back to the ferry in Picton. We took a northern route and enjoyed the

scenery associated with the Marlborough sound. Be wary of any road marked “scenic” in New Zealand.
Alternative descriptions are slow, narrow and overly curvy. We took the scenic road on the final
segment to Picton which was marked as a slower route even though it was half as long as the other
option. It was probably slower, but it was lovely.

In total, we will have spent a little over a week on the South Island and have a little over a week left on
the North. Going north also meant gradually getting warmer temps. So we packed away our layers that
will keep us comfy when we land in Iowa.