Untamed Wilderness Continued
After Franz Josef, our west coast road trip took us to Greymouth further north, with a lunch stop at a touristy small beach town called Hokitika. I mention Hokitika mostly because it has a sandwich shop rated 4.9 out of 5 on Google, with over 170 reviews (no one and nothing gets reviewed that well by so many people!) and it was totally the best sandwich I’ve had this past year. Anyway. Greymouth is the largest town in the western region of South Island, with a population of about 10,000, which accounts for about a third of the west coast’s inhabitants. That can tell you how sparsely populated the place generally is. A former mining town, Greymouth is not a particularly charming place; if it ever did have any luster, it’s long lost. But - we still made the most of it by going on a two hour off-road quad bike / buggy ride and on a tour of the local Monteith brewery. Where they told us that one of the brewing tanks was named Casper after the brewery cat who fell into a certain death when the tanks did not have lids?!!! 😳 In the US, the lawyers would not let you tell that story on the brewery tour. We also ate the local dish called white bait patty - seems like what you eat when you go fishing and can’t catch any fish and the only ingredients you have are tiny bait fish and eggs. Surprisingly for a fish dish, Corey liked it and I didn’t. There’s a first for everything.
The drive north from Greymouth is meant to be one of the most scenic drives in New Zealand. It’s a coaster drive along the Tasman Sea with steep cliffs rising on land covered by temperate rain forest. A cross between the geography of the west coast of Ireland and the flora of Costa Rica, for lack of a better description. Where are the ecologists in my life when I need them? It was quite an overcast and rainy day though, so we didn’t get the tourism brochure sunny skies and blue seas views. It was still quite beautiful but in an ominous way. And the winding roads made for a difficult drive. This got us to our last stop on the South Island: Nelson. Nelson is a charming city of 50,000, facing the sea, and surrounded by national parks and the Marlborough district of the famed Sauvignon Blancs. We had good food (oysters and vegan specifically), walked around and went on a run on the marina.
