The West Coast is a narrow strip around 30km wide between the sea and the Southern Alps and today we went to take a look at Arthur’s Pass, the most dramatic of the passes through the mountains. We continued down the coast with more rain and angry sea, then headed inland passing flooded fields, one with a farmer in a bright yellow bodysuit rescuing his stranded sheep.
Onwards towards Arthur’s Pass, with high forested mountains either side and waterfalls cascading their waters downwards. At Otira Viaduct, there is a shelter to protect the road from rockslides, and a shute diverting water over the road. In fact Otira, being on the soggy west gets 6m of rain a year, while Bealey, just the other side of pass on the drier east side gets only 2m.
Amazingly our luck is holding and as we arrive at the pass, the rain stops and the sun comes out … but boy is it cold and windy … so a quick walk and back to the van to warm up! One other treat was seeing a kea, a green alpine parrot. He was very cheeky, chasing Chris, then posing for the camera. They persist in trying to scavenge tourist treats, but it increases their reliance on humans and means they can’t cope in the winter, so feeding them is forbidden.
We spent the night at Jacksons Retreat on the way back to the coast.
Off Travelling Together 