We officially reached the west coast around 10:30 the next morning and headed North. Our first stop was at Blue Pools, a 30 minute round trip hike to a suspension bridge over a river with some beautiful deep clear blue pools. From there we stopped outside Haast at the Curly Tree Whitebait Company to try whitebait pattys. Whitebait is just the term for a baby fish, doesn't matter what species, and you eat them whole fried up with a bit of egg and served with lemon and salt. We stopped at two waterfalls between there and the town of Fox taking the drive nice and slow to save gas and not miss any of the scenery. In Fox we hiked up to the glacier, but the Department of Conservation doesn't allow visitors to get closer than 200m from the ice. From Fox we drove on to Franz Joseph and splurged on a night in a holiday park so we could take our weekly shower.

The weather was a bit dreary the next day, but cleared up just long enough for us to hike out to the glacier viewing point, past the prettiest waterfall in New Zealand. We headed back to town to hunt down our friend Wyatt from Alaska who was working as a guide on the glacier, and after a quick lunch to catch up we got back on the road. 40 minutes North of Franz Joseph is a beautiful little DOC campsite next to Lake Lanthe so we decided to set up an early camp to watch the beautiful sunset over the water.

We slept in the next morning then made our way slowly to Hokitika, a cute little town with a lot of shops and cafes. We spent some time walking around, visited the Sock Machine Museum and ate lunch at Fat Pipis Pizza. From Hokitika we headed to Greymouth, but despite it being the largest town on the West Coast we couldn't find much to do. We had expected our trip up the coast to take a bit longer than it did, so we had made an appointment at Barrytown Knifemaking for Saturday. Unfortunately we made it to Greymouth on Wednesday so we stocked up on food and headed to Nelson Creek to the free campground to hang out for a few days.

After 3 relaxing days at Nelson Creek reading and napping we headed to Barrytown to forge our own knives in a full-day class. We started at 9:30 in the morning with a raw bar of steel and ended at 5 with a shiny new knife. We had to heat the steel in the forge until it glowed orange...too long and it would burn...then hammer it out on the anvil to flatten the blade and infuse the steel with more carbon. 3 or 4 rounds of hammering and then we heated it once more and quenched it in a bucket of water to harden it. From there we marked out the length of the handle and cut off the extra steel with a hacksaw. Then we took the steel to the belt sander to remove the black and polish the middle of the blade before we started on the handle. 

After we finished up with the knives we still had enough daylight left to explore Pancake Rocks, thin sheets of limestone with thinner layers of mudstone in between that make them look just like big stacks of flapjacks. Scientists aren't exactly sure what caused them to form that way, but they do know that they formed on the sea-bed and were later lifted up and eroded away to form the large towers and cliffs. We ended our day at a holiday park in Charleston and enjoyed another good shower to wash off all the ash from the forge.

The next morning we drove through Westport headed for the end of the West Coast road. We stopped in Seddonville to explore the Chasm Creek Walkway, a short bushwalk that went through an old railway tunnel and over several bridges. After our little hike we drove through Karamea to Oparara to see the limestone arches and caves. All the trails were at the end of a 14k dirt road and it was in pretty rough shape so it took quite a while to get out there. We hiked out to the Oparara Arch on a trail that ran parallel to a beautiful stream. The arch was massive...several hundred feet high and wide...but the best part of the hike was the friendly little bird we met on the way back. He followed us for several feet, flying past our heads and jumping from branch to branch next to us, and when we stopped and put out our hands he had no qualms about jumping into our palms and trying to divest us of our rings. By the time we finished the hike we were both pretty hungry, so we decided to cook dinner and save the cave hikes for the next morning.

We woke up to a bit of a drizzle, but considering we planned on spending the morning underground it didn't bother us too much. We made the short hike out to Crazy Paving Cave where the floor was covered in "bricks" of fine sediment that dried slowly and cracked to give it a cobblestone look. The walkway was wired off to protect the fragile formations and it only took a few minutes to see the whole cave. Box Canyon Cave, right next door, didn't have any of the natural "paving stones" and so we were free to explore every nook and cranny of the enormous cave. Steve quickly found the narrowest passage possible and we began worming our way into the depths of the cave. 

Our side-stepping and shoulder scraping paid off in the form of a small chamber full of massive hand-sized spiders. These cave spiders are apparently direct descendants of the earliest known true spiders and the sign at the entrance warned us to "look but do not touch," a sentiment entirely unnecessary in my opinion as I can't even imagine wanting to touch them with a 10 foot pole. It did make me slightly less inclined to want to go squeezing into any more small spaces, but when we made our way to the back of the cave I couldn't resist climbing up a large pile of sedimental clay deposited by who know what source of water. From the top of my 30ft mountain and I had a clear view of the massive cave around me, and I discovered another small passageway that led to the rear of the cave where we found a little colony of glow worms. We turned off our headlamps and enjoyed the artificial starlight for a few minutes before heading back above ground.

By the time we emerged into the daylight the rain had all but ended and our drive back to the main road was bumpy, but uneventful. We headed back south to Westport and took the road for Nelson, planning to slowly make our way from there to Christchurch and then back to the Queenstown Lakes area to start looking for jobs.

To see more of the West Coast's beauty go to the photo post here.