LThe morning sun was shining on the sheep as they grazed...
So many shades of green...
Lots of cattle on huge tracks of pasture land...
Lots of cattle on huge tracks of pasture land...
The area is very rural with few signs of anyone living here...
We did pass through some little towns with brightly coloured houses and cafes...
Once we turned down the coast highway we could see why this area was called the Wild West Coast, very few people live here and the land and seascapes are wild.
There were miles and miles of this beautiful vista...
For our lunch break the bus driver stopped at an area called Pancake Rocks where there is a wonderful walkway out among the rock formations so we had time enough to see them...
Arriving in Greymouth, a town of about 13,000 we made our way to our hostel which was located in a former monastery...
For some reason they have the rooms all named after animals, we got the cow room...
Don snuggling up with his new friend!
We stayed here three nights and really enjoyed it, we met people from all over the world from age 20 to 70, there was the young Israeli woman who had just finished her 4 years in the army to the 70year old professional bee keeper who had travelled all over the world including to Canada. We cooked meals together, shared lots of stories and laughs as well...
Greymouth has a long history as a resource town built first on gold, then coal and then timber but right now is down on its luck...
A sign in the main square...
The town looks to be struggling as their resource based industries have all but disappeared...
A lot of derelict buildings...
One of the reasons we came here was to catch a tour of the glaciers which are a few hours away, but with torrential rains and tour unavailabity this did not happen so we chilled out in Greymouth.
Between the sideways rain which reminded us of home we walked out to the breakwater which was quite nice...
Passed by the fishing boats...
The beaches at the end...
The town has done a great job of keeping their history alive and here they had reconstructed a WW11 bunker built to spot the waited Japanese attack, this picture of the rocky beach was taken from there...
Murals and public art around town also celebrate their history...
I was impressed they still had a local paper...
The other reason Greymouth exists is the TransAlpine train which runs across New Zealand to Christchurch...
The South Island has a long range of mountains called the Southern Alps which the train crosses to get from the Tasman Sea to the Pacific Ocean in about 5 hours.
The rain had stopped in Greymouth when we started our trip but the people getting off told us to prepare for torrential rains once we reached the mountains on the trip back...
All aboard...
Some of the scenery as we began...
The Grey River...
Lake Brunner...
The clouds starting to descend...
There was a very interesting commentary providing details about the history and geography of the places we were travelling through...
And then the rain started with overflowing riverbanks as we went along...
The waterfalls were high...
We stopped at Arthur’s Pass to pick up some passengers that had been dropped off earlier in the day...
Then into plains with mountain backdrops...
In this area there are also massive sheep and cattle stations as they are called here, they can be 100,000 hectares where ranchers raise both sheep and cattle. Although they can’t be seen clearly there are hundreds of sheep on the side of the hill. Depending on the time of the season the sheep will graze up and down the mountains...
After that came the tunnels through the mountains with one being over 8km long...
Then over the deep gorges...
Looking back to one of the bridges we crossed...
One of our last looks at the river as we rolled on towards Christchurch...
This portion of our trip gave us an opportunity to see another side of the natural beauty of New Zealand, both along the coast and through the mountains. This country is awesome in so many ways!
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