Day 3 – A rally driver and playing tourist on the West Coast

We were away relatively early (it takes a little while to pack and load the bikes) with our destination being Haast.

Compared to our trip last year it was lovely weatherwise. There was a little bit of cloud obscuring the mountains but little wind and most importantly, no rain. Our first stop was the Okarito Lagoon. Bev who was driving at the time decided it was time to drive like a rally driver. I am not the best passenger because I also drive the road at the same time so I was rather relieved when we slowed down and came to a halt at the lagoon. We had hoped to see the Kotuku (a native white heron – blown over from Australia several hundred years ago) known to inhabit the area but we were not in luck today and I suspect that is a rare treat. However, it was good to see the place which I have heard so much about. There is a small village there which I suspect is mostly made up of baches (holiday houses).

On the road to the lagoon there were regular signs warning of kiwi inhabiting the area and to be careful. If my memory is correct there is a very rare kiwi in that area called the rowi.

A few kilometres on we drove up to look at the Franz Joseph glacier. It is around 50 years since I was last there. I was a still a school boy in shorts. Back then we went on a glacier flight and landed on it high up in the mountains. My recollection was that it was visible from the main road and that you could walk along a path to almost the face of the glacier. It has now retreated a huge distance and although still visible I am pretty sure it was beyond the narrow part that you now see as rock in the photo. The infrastructure is a far cry from what it was all that time ago when it was a narrow gravel road to the parking area. It was so calm and quiet it was a nice thing to do.

The retreating glacier

Getting close and personal

Afterwards we drove to Fox Glacier Village where we had lunch in a café that only had one other customer. I spoke to the person running the café and she said the resident population had halved from almost 360 residents to 180. Business is very poor and about 15 percent of what it was pre-Covid.

Our next stop was Lake Matheson, the famed mirror lake where on a good day either early in the morning or near dusk, in still conditions, you can see reflections of the mountains including Mt Cook. No such luck for us today but the walk to the lake was lovely.

If only the mountains were showing

Wrong time of day for reflections!

Wherever we stop we encounter the grey brigade and it is a bit disturbing to realise that we are part of it now. At least we are supporting the tourism industry.

Haast was our last stop. On the way there we came across a lookout at Knights Point where there were superb views of the coast and a structure that marked the time when a few kilometres south, the crews constructing the Haast highway met, enabling travel between Otago and the West Coast. I remember that event and I also remember driving the circuit in the early seventies and for a large part of it, from Lake Hawea to Fox Glacier Village, it being a gravel road.

We stayed in a motel at Haast Beach. The motel was only 150 metres from the beach and was well appointed and good value. We had dinner at the local hotel and it was just on dusk when we arrived back, so we grabbed the camera and headed across the road to the beach just in time to see the sun go down. It was a wonderful sight and we joined a number of the other motel residents also taking photos. It was so pretty. An empty beach apart from an abundance of driftwood scattered along the foreshore.

It was a wonderful way to end the day.