Gowestfor awildride
Fromglaciersandglow-wormsto cavingandgold-mining, Pamelawadefindsthatalongweekendisn’tenoughtime to experience the delights of thewestcoast.
It’s like being in a Road Runner cartoon. The weka comes hurtling around the corner at full speed, suddenly spots me, and scrambles madly with its claws on the path to change direction.
Then it’s gone into the bush and I’m alone again, with just the roar of the sea and the rattle of the flax leaves for company.
Punakaiki on a damp spring morning is a moody place. The clouds hang low over the dark hills, spray drifts along the shore over the white scallops of foam and the famous Pancake Rocks are black against the silver sea.
Yesterday was so different. The bush glowed in the sun, amillion shades of green, the Tasman sparkled blue and, as we skimmed in a jet boat down the river at Whataroa, the air was warm in our faces.
A trailer, another boat and a boardwalk took us to a very special place, the nesting site for New Zealand’s ko¯tuku, or white herons.
These beautiful birds with dazzlingly white feathers number only about 120 altogether and, for the rest of the year, are dispersed around the country. But, in spring, they come to this floating forest next to the Okarito Lagoon to raise their chicks.
It’s a glorious sight. According to Ma¯ori legend, it brings good fortune to see just one in a lifetime, so we felt particularly lucky.
But today, the luck seems to have run out. The cloud means that our helicopter ride up on to Franz Josef Glacier is cancelled, and we’ll have to go the old-fashioned way – on foot.
We trudge up the riverbed, astonished to learn that the tongue of the glacier, which looks so close, is two kilometres away.
It’s our first lesson in how big this river of ice really is. The second is when we start to climb it, zigzagging up the face and getting to the top, we see another level and then another beyond it, stepping up into the clouds.
At first, the ice is dirty, covered in fine gravel but, as we climb, it becomes a beautiful translucent blue.
Guide Phil goes ahead with a pickaxe, hacking at the steps. Even so, going up and, especially, down, is nerve-racking at times.
‘‘Trust your feet,’’ Phil repeats, and it’s like learning to walk all over again, stamping hard so that the crampons we’ve strapped on bite into the ice and hold us safely.
Two hours of glacier climbing sets us up perfectly for lolling in the hot pools back in the village, which is humming with activity.
‘‘Franz Josef is the [West] Coast’s party town,’’ we’re told. But we have other plans for the evening.
There’s a tasting menu at Te Waonui Forest Retreat with our name on it and, by the time we’ve worked through five courses, including wild pork pie, venison and whitebait, plus a selection of glorious desserts, we’re not going anywhere but to bed.
The next morning’s guided tour takes us north again, getting the local gossip along the way: that pile of gravel in someone’s backyard is their private gold mine; a sea leopard was living on that beach recently; the arty driftwood-style Hokitika sign looks like a gallows to some of the town’s residents.
There’s plenty of history, too, and candid answers to our random questions about life on the West Coast. It’s so much more interesting than driving ourselves and just wondering about everything we see.
Charleston, for instance, is a blip of a place now,