Day 13 - Through the Haast Pass
It was time to head north, towards Mount Cook National Park. I originally wanted to see Mt. Cook from the the east, but there are 2 glaciers on the west coast that have incredibly accessible faces.. so I opted for a day's journey through the Haast Pass to Franz Josef village instead, a small support town of about 300, situated 5km from the Franz Josef glacier face. I would be able to explore Mt.Cook from there as well.
The Haast pass is only one of 3 passes through the Southern Alps, meaning that there are only so many ways you can set up a route through the south island, especially if you want to see the west coast.
The bus ride was due to last 7-8 hours, with a short stop in Wanaka, which was originally on my list of places to check out as well. I couldn't justify staying there overnight though, given how much time I had left in the country and how many items remained on my "to see/do" list, so a 15 minute stop would have to do.
Here's a shot of the bus/van I was on: booked via nakedbus.com. Amazing service. You go on their website, book your ride, write down the number that pops up, and when the bus driver reads off your number, you get on. No tickets.. no checks.. nice and easy. A great (and cheap) way to get around the country.
Unfortunately it was very cloudy for most of the ride, with occasional rain, so I didn't get any good photos until we stopped at Thunder Creek Falls, more than halfway into the ride.
A note on the roads there: The whole route was a 2 lane road - 1 lane in each direction. The bridges were all.. wait for it.. 1 lane. So basically each time the bus approached a bridge, the driver would have to stop, make sure there's nobody heading in the other direction, and then carefully proceed.
Our next stop was at Knight's point, a lookout point on the Tasman sea with historical significance. In the 1950's, when the road we were on was being constructed, a part of it was being built through the Haast pass, and the other end from the north, from Greymouth. Knight's point was where the two construction crews met and an obelisk monument and lookout point were constructed. (and beers probably consumed)
Not much to look at really, but at least you can see how damn cloudy it was. Plus you're learning things about history!
For lunch we stopped at a salmon farm. I had a delicious smoked salmon on dark rye bread cheese sandwich. If it wasn't delicious I wouldn't be mentioning it here. I guess I just am not used to super fresh salmon, because that lunch was f'n memorable.
A couple hours later and we were in Franz Josef Village, which according to my notes "I did not like very much". I forget if I had a reservation at the hostel I was dropped off or not, but either way, turns out I was bunking with two lesbians. Two messy messy lesbians. The hostel was also overrun with Kiwi Experience travellers, which is basically a large bus that takes tourists across the country, stopping at pretty sights, hostels, and so on. It's horribly overpriced if you ask me, because I did look into it as an option when planning my trip. The particular Kiwi Experience bus that happened to stop at the hostel just after I arrived dropped off a large group of obnoxious 20 year old party chavs .. or at least that was my first & likely somewhat unfair assessment of them. I was tired, a lot of them were British and loud, and let's leave it at that for now.
I ate some of the freeze dried food I had left over from my hikes, IIRC a lot of mashed potatoes, and crashed at 9:30pm without doing any planning for the next day. I sort of knew what I wanted to do and see in the area, but I was too tired to think about any of it.