This morning waking up to the rain on the roof of the hut was strangely welcoming and nice to be tucked p in bed. It was hard to leave the retreat but time was ticking on so leave I had to.
Last night the Israeli guy, Steve, had asked if he can share a ride down to Franz Josef with me this morning so after a bit of a late start we headed off, heading for the Pancake rocks. Steve seems like a nice guy relying purely on rides to get around NZ, I wonder if it might be the Israeli way cause he’s not the first from there I’ve met doing the same thing, a cheap way to travel but I don’t think you can be in too much of a hurry really having to rely on other people.
The pancake Rocks
Our first stop was the Pancake rocks just a few mins down the road where the rocks are in layers just like pancakes (!). Apparently the wonders of science still don’t really know how this process takes place, which seems strange to me as everything is explained by science (isn’t it?) but they don’t which only adds to the mystical magic of the area. We grabbed a bit of lunch here as well, I did have a sandwich in the boot of the car, nicely warming up in the heat (!) but the smell of pizza was just too much so I just had to have a slice with some chips, I’ll have the, by then even warmer, sandwich for dinner.
Pancake Rocks
As we headed off down the coast and chatted it seemed Steven had even less of a plan than me. He had with him a tent and cooking gear so if he did get caught out with accommodation he always had a backup. My backup plan, on the other hand was ......... actually I didn’t seem to have a backup plan! I knew that I really needed to book some accommodation for tonight but for some reason didn’t seem to get round to it very early.
We arrived at Greymouth, the largest town on the west coast, but you wouldn’t have thought it really, I guess it just gives more of an idea on the size of the towns and cities here compared to home. We had a little look around and checked out the train station where the train leaves from to go over Arthurs Pass to Christchurch and that was pretty much it, we had done Greymouth.
Back on the road again we headed south. I had seen in the guide book a place called Shanty Town which recreates a 1860s gold-mining town, complete with post office, pub and tea house that I fancied visiting. I wasn’t sure if my travelling companion would want to
visit as well though as I sensed he was on quite a budget but we went to take a look anyway. Once we got there and to the ticket desk it looked a really interesting place to see but Steven wasn’t that keen. However, he really didn’t seem to mind if I wanted to go in, I felt really bad about the idea of me going in and him not but he was insistent saying he had things to do (!). So at this point we were at the ticket desk and as he was so insistent I agreed to go in for a bit and in the process managed to hand my car keys with all my gear in and I do mean all my gear i
ncluding my lipsil (which I really needed) to a complete stranger!!! That was except of course my purse, laptop and camera. Really though, what was I thinking, I had known this guy about 20 hours and all I knew was his first name, to make it slightly worse, as he was walking away he said ‘don’t worry, I wont run away with your car’, great, thanks for that Steven, up until then I hadn’t even thought you might! So for the next hour I couldn’t really relax, I’m looking around this lovely old Shanty Town and all I could think about was if he did decide to run away with the car exactly what kind of story I was gonna conjure up for the insurance company and quite how I was gonna get out of this one!
As I was leaving the Shanty Town wondering if was gonna have a car standing there or not, I’m not sure I have even been so glad to see anyone as I was to see Steven still there and with my car and all my gear intact (including lipsil), not only that but I passed him as
he was on his way to get some water saying that dinner was cooking! Fantastic! He had set up a little camp just near the car and was in the process of cooking us spaghetti bolognese. I was more relieved that I still had a car rather than the fact that dinner was cooking but it was definitely a bonus.
We sat at the picnic site (just out of sight of the car) chatting and waiting for dinner to cook and one by one we saw the other cars leaving the car park and really didn’t think anything of it until I popped back to the car to get something and there was the owner of the Shanty Town in his car looking around everywhere for us, he wanted to shut up shop and lock the gates. I think he was a little concerned that he was going to shut us in the park area for the night and we’d never be seen again. He wasn’t best please to be honest but I guess just like us he was e
ager for his dinner as well. Anyway I hurried back to where Steven and our dinner was and told him we had to go, his reply was but dinners ready now, can’t we eat it here, I didn’t fancy our chances of trying to ask so we quickly chucked all the cooking equipment, spaghetti, bolognese, mini-cooker, dishes, knives and forks in the car and drove off fast. So picture the scene, there’s me driving and Steven cradling our dinner as we speed off down the road looking for somewhere to pull over to eat, but could we find anywhere?? In the end we just pulled off on the side of the road and sat on a couple of pebbles and ate our dinner, slightly cooler than planned but tasty, still chuckling over the previous 20 mins events.
When we finally got back on the road again I decided I needed to call somewhere for a bed for the night but didn’t anticipate quite how busy it was at Franz Josef. At the third attempt I managed to secure a bed for the night but just had this real sinking feeling though that after the most perfect night I had just had that this one wasn’t going to quite compare.
I couldn’t have been more right!
The dorm slept ten people, sleep maybe, that was if you could sleep through eight people going to bed and getting up at 15 min intervals between midnight and 7am making as much noise as humanly possible while also leaving the light on full, another person was in the top bunk right near me and had his MP3 playing through earphones full belt all night, I think to be fair he was trying to block out the noise the other eight were making. The tenth person was me, and I just wanted to sleep!
Steven, lucky thing, managed to get the last bed in the town in a 4 person share.
My first view of Franz Josef
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