Our Journey to the Southern Tip (Part 1)

[NOTE: We’ve found that unless we break our posts down into digestible pieces, we will never finish writing them.  Thus, this is the first installment chronicling our travels.  With any luck, it won’t the the last one.  Stay tuned!]

Over Chanukah, Christmas and New Years, we packed up the car, picked up some CDs and books on tape from the library and hit the road towards the southern tip of the South Island.  We planned many stops along the way while leaving plenty of time for spur of the moment adventures (or, more accurately, we didn’t plan very well aside from knowing where we were staying each night).  Our trip began on December 18th and we returned to Westport on January 3rd.

Our first stop was the Punakaiki Cavern adjacent to the famous Pancake Rocks, an hour south of Westport.  After a quick spelunk, we were back in the car to meet up with Leah’s friend Ollie (and family) from Cambridge for lunch and a tour of the Monteith brewery in Greymouth.  Although they didn’t sample as much beer as we did, the kids enjoyed the tour and especially their snazzy orange vests:

Then it was off to Hokitika in the heart of New Zealand greenstone or pounamu (aka jade) country.  On our way down, we joked that they should call it “Ho-Ho-Hokitika” at Christmastime and low and behold this is what we encountered as we rolled into town:

After a yummy dinner, a short sleep and a windy picnic, we were back on the road heading south to meet up with our cousins at Franz Josef Glacier.  We were lucky that Rebecca, Eric, Eli and Tessa decided to make the long journey to NZ to come see us over their winter holiday break.

First, we spent a couple days near Franz and Fox glaciers which, although they’ve both receded in recent years, are spectacular phenomena, having carved huge valleys through the mountains and still providing a picturesque presence even on overcast days (as we’re finding, there’s a lot of precipitation up and down the west coast of the South Island and the glacial region is no exception):

As you can imagine, there were frequent displays of cousin love during our travels together:

Here’s a link to some more cousin pics.

Stay tuned for the next installment which will include our epic day hike in search of seals near Lake Moeraki and Chanukah in Wanaka.  You won’t want to miss it!