Sixteenth Stop: West Coast

The entire West Coast was our next destination, all the way to Queenstown. We made stops in 4 cities, it is worth noting that the cities are all very small and there is not much to see there. That's why we only slept two nights in each city.

Our first stop was Westport. It was pretty much the first city that should be a little bigger than the other places or there is not much more than nature between Nelson and Westport! When we arrived there, we quickly realized that there wasn't much happening here. It was really the perfect setting for a Western movie. The town was also not very big, so our city tour was quickly over. But what makes me happy and I tell you with great satisfaction: It is really warm here now. I don't think about long clothes anymore.

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2.5 days later we continued to Greymouth. We definitely liked it more there. Still not much life in the city, but we felt more comfortable there. In Greymouth we did the Arthurs Pass. There are different hiking trails there. The path that leads all the way to the top was, to be honest, too dangerous for us. And in our opinion, we were too inexperienced hikers for that. The path was not really visible / signposted and it was mostly just climbing on rock walls. We ventured up for a while, but after a good hour we decided to go back and hike to the 'Punchbowl Waterfalls'. And it was definitely worth it.

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The day after, after the Arthurs Pass, we went to Hokitika. Because we travel by bus, we usually arrive around lunchtime, then we go shopping and it's time to eat again. There is rarely any time to do something on the day of arrival. The next day we went to Hokitika 'Gorge'. There was a suspension bridge that leads over a river. But see for yourself what a great river it was:

Doesn't that look magical? Just beautiful! Since Hokitika is also known for a beautiful sunset, we also watched it on that evening. Among all the anglers, we sat on the rocks and simply enjoyed it.

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The last stop before we go to Queenstown was Franz Josef. Franz Josef is only a place to travel through or visit the glaciers. There are basically two glaciers that can be visited from there: the Franz Josef Glacier and the Fox Glacier. Since the Franz Josef Glacier is a bit bigger and is said to be the only glacier in the world that is still growing, we decided to visit this glacier. It took us 45 minutes to reach the foot of the glacier.

And it was really interesting to learn that the glacier shrank by a quarter from 1960 to 2000, as it did from 2000 to 2010.

Unfortunately, we had some bad luck with the weather. It rained all day. So we were soaking wet when we returned to the hostel. The next day was also bad weather and we were not disappointed that we are now on the bus to Queenstown and didn't have to hike to the Fox Glacier.