West Coast New Zealand

Well we are alive and well but have had a couple of days of limited wireless access. Thus no news from us.
We stayed one night in the Fox Glacier area. We were able to walk into the town and get a nice dinner. Next AM we walked up to the glacier itself. We have seen plenty of glaciers in Alaska but every one is unique and this one was no exception.

Then we drove on to Greymouth and stayed for two nights there ina downtown hotel. We were supposed to visit the Quinns in Greymouth, but their trip had major disruption and they were not with us. They had left a very welcome note for us at the front desk on arrival. Greynouth is very industrial, located on a river mouth. While there we took a tubing trip through a cave with glow worms on the ceiling which was very cool. Jim and I did some cliff jumping into the river. We found a great Irish pub with Murphy Stout on tap and all was well for a while. We got to tour a brewery Monteiths and sample all their wares. On the tour were a bunch of stodgy Brits who we had to work on loosening up in the tasting room.

On Monday we got back in the van and drove further North to Karamea, a little idyllic town on the coast. On the way we stopped and walked for several miles on Foulwind cape and saw a cool lighthouse and a big seal colony. The have several species of flightless birds here like the Kiwi. We encountered one called the Weka on the trail. They look like a duck but have no wings.

Karamea is near the end of the road and gets very little tourist traffic in comparison. Jim and I did a little fishing and the girls walked about exploring. They came back with more than we did. The owner of the hotel is a retired dairy farmer and a great guy. We had dinner with them at their home last night and had a pleasant evening.

 It is a friendship with a future as they are planning a trip to Alaska nex summer and we have made plans to host them for part of it. They invited us to stay a third night no charge and since it is a typhoon outside we are going to take them up on it. We ate Red Snapper with them which he caught off the beach at his former dairy farm. The pastures here go right down to the beach and there are hundreds of miles of them. He had a unique method of fishing. He has a powered torpedo sort of thing which he points out to sea and it drags several hundred yards of heavy line with it. The line has places to clip short leaders on with hooks and bait on the ends of the leaders, like halibut long lines. Then he reels it back in after a while and gets the fish, if anny took the bait. They also scuba dive right off the beach and get plentiful crawfish, which we call lobsters, and eat them in abundance. Limit 6 per day per diver. Not a bad spot of the globe I Would say.

We are still at their place and plan on heading over to the East probably tomorrow, arriving in Nelson around the 4^th to begin the Motorcycle portion of the trip. I will post this and add pictures later today.  Dick