Down the West Coast and Across Arthur's Pass

After leaving Abel Tasman we headed west towards a town called Westport. The plan was the spend Monday night in Westport and then spend Tuesday traveling down the west coast and back to Christchurch via Arthur's Pass. The drive from Abel to Westport was phenomenal! The road took us along a river, through rolling hills and sheep farms, and then into the Southern Alps. After a couple of hours of driving, with a couple photo stops we came upon the town of Westport, a town which my guide book described as "lacking in charm". We found that all of the motels had no vacancies and were worried we'd have to spend another night sleeping on the ground. But, we located a backpackers place called the Trip Inn which provided us with a double room complete with real mattresses. With lodging secured we headed out for some dinner and found a place called Porta Bello which served me a nice steak and Jake some beef lasagne, both complete with delicious salad. Feeling content after a nice meal, we headed out into the night to find the entire town closed at 9:30 PM. Oh well! We walked back to our place, split 3 beers and went to sleep, enjoying the comforts of one of the smallest mattresses I've ever slept on.


We were out of the Trip Inn around 10 AM and heading south along the west coast. The west coast of New Zealand is bordered by the Tasman Sea and looks a lot like the Pacific Coast of the US. The road bordering the west coast here even greatly resembles Route 1, so the scenery was wonderful. We made a couple photo stops and then arrived at our first attraction of the day: the Pancake Rocks. These rocks are a wonderful sight and we spent about 30 minutes walking around them, snapping lots of photos.



We continued on to a town called Greymouth, which is probably the biggest town on the west coast and took lunch there. After lunch, we continued south and then cut east heading towards Arthur's Pass and Christchurch. We were again treated to wonderful scenery and great views of pastures and mountains. As we came into Arthur's Pass, we decided to get out and go for a short hike into the woods. With our legs stretched we then got a snack at a small cafe in town (and by town I mean like 3 stores) and then moved on to the home stretch. Our last stop of the journey was at one of Jake's favorite places: Castle Hill. Castle Hill is very close to where Narnia was filmed (we drove past the road that was made to serve the Narnia set) and basically consists of hundreds of rocks on a hill. Some nice photo shots, and also a great place to just wander around and marvel. After our stop at Castle Hill we headed into Christchurch, arriving around 7PM or so. We unpacked, had a nice fish dinner and watched the movie Miracle to unwind from our journey.