Day 9
I peeked out the window as I woke and knew our run of rain was surely at an end, blue sky! We did the usual breakfast/shower routine when mid washing the dishes our water ran out. Luckily the fresh water fill up was only 20 meters away. We tidied up and got on the road. Drove past the houses that are really standing up again the Wild West Coast conditions. Sea spray is just inescapable.
Before we left Greymouth we filled up the bigger gas bottle that had run out the night before, and topped up the diesel. Restocked food supplies and then we were on our way to Arthur’s Pass. We stopped off at the remains of Brunner Mine. An old coal mine from back in the day. A lot of history there, in 1896 an explosion deep in the mine killed all 65 workers in side, and was labelled as NZ’s worst mining disaster in history.
I was a bit anxious that the cloud was going to ruin the good start to the day but the sun starting burning off the cloud. Monita took over the driving and we made a couple stops for photos. I had only seen photos of the Otira Viaduct (basically a tall as bridge) before and was quite excited to drive over/see it. It wasn’t until we approached the Otira Tunnel that I realised we were close to it. Driving over it wasn’t scary at all, we stopped at the lookout, took in the views, hung with the Kea’s and had some tasty sandwiches courtesy of Monita!
We carried on to Arthur’s Pass village where we would stay for the night. As we drove I saw a sign for Temple Basin Ski area, at the last second we pulled into the gravel carpark. What we thought to be a ‘walk’ turned into a hike, for an hour and a half! We weren’t really prepared but we pushed on anyway, and what was before our eyes was totally worth it.
The sun was descending as we did and we made it to the village just before night fall. Parked up at the DOC site and got an early night for our last day.
