Crossing the Southern Alps (January 9)

Julia and Rachel went for a run before our delicious breakfast at the B&B.  Rachel returned to the room first, leaving Julia and me without a key to the room.  Our knocks on the door went unanswered for quite some time and when Rachel finally let us in, she had written a new song: “I was in the bathroom…” It was quite catchy!

We wanted to get on the road early because we had a lot of driving to get from Christchurch to the west coast, and we wanted to take our time with stops.  Our first stop (recommended by Angie) was Castle Hill.  We had a great hour-long walk past so many sheep and through really cool formations.  We read about how the Māori eradicated the giant eagles. 

Next stop was Arthur’s Pass village where we had lunch in a little cafe (Jim ate in the car) and saw the elusive Kea birds.  They were super aggressive and didn’t seem elusive at all in this spot! 

From there, it was a quick 5-minute drive to the trailhead for the Devil’s Punchbowl Falls.  There were so many stairs (134 vertical meters in a pretty short hike) and the air felt thinner and super dry, though I don’t think we were at much altitude.  

We continued to drive to the West Coast, passing Oreo cows and alongside a glass-domed train at times.  When we got to the junction at the coast, we had planned to head south to Franz Joseph, but Roger suggested we turn right to Pancake Rocks.  Though it would add on to our already long drive, we decided to do it and it was well worth it. As we got closer, the terrain turned really tropical and the road winding (like the road to Hana kinda or the way up the CA coast). The Pancake rocks were awesome — unexplained how they formed, but quite something to see!

We headed back the way we came —  three more hours of masked driving south to arrive at Franz Joseph.  We listened to the Tim Ferris interview with Hugh Jackman — along the way, and we learned some interesting things about meditation and the 85% Rule.

Rachel was starting to sleep a lot in the car (foreshadowing)

It was close to 8 pm by the time we got to town and we were all (mostly me) a little hangry. We checked into our separate rooms (got Jim his own again tonight) at our motel and walked to Alice May Jackson restaurant (in honor of a woman who killed a man in the early 1900s and was jailed but got out after a feminist outpouring of support and demands she be released). Jim took his food to go, but the girls and I got to eat in a pretty beautiful setting. 

On our walk back to our hotel, Rachel pointed out how the light was hitting the mountains and said “Can you see, Mama?” — the way she said it sounded like I was either blind or on my deathbed.  It became a repeated phrase on our trip. We played more Nancy Drew before bed.