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West Coast - Westland 19.-22. 12. 2019

Lush beech forest at Haast Pass that rises up 560 m, which is making it the lowest pass in the Southern Alps.

One minus 10 is -9 people, which is fine. Ten plus 1 person is 11 people, which is not fine.

Suspension bridge over the Makarora River.

At the confluence with the Blue River.

Where tourists come to see Blue Pools.

Thunder Creek Falls on the other side of the pass. Rain is getting stronger and stroneg as we are approaching the West Coast.

A quick and wet stop in Ship Creek.

It rains so often that they built a lookout and information area with roof.

Another river mouth.

A glance from the Swamp Forest Trail.

Knights Point further north along the coast.

Spending the torrential downpour in Fox Glacier Village in hostel Jacuzzi.

Ready to check out Franz Josef Glacier after the weather improved the next day.

The person carving something on the pillar supporting the information board is fake. He has a shadow on his face on a cloudy day.

The valley with the glacier far behind.

Trail to the glacier closed due to Danger!

There were severe floods two weeks ago that damaged many roads and hiking paths in this area.

They managed to rebuild the road to Franz Josef Glacier very quickly.

Escaping closer to the coastline where the weather was nicer.

Okarito Lagoon.

The vegetation is mostly pristine on the West Coast and so are the possibilities to see endemic fauna are higher.

Okarito Wetland Walk.

Abundant are also fern trees.

This one is black tree fern (Sphaeropteris medullaris) with impressive size of unrolling frond.

Trying to spot kiwi inside thicket, before we found out that these are nocturnal animals.

They are putting a lot of effort to exterminate the invasive predators also in this part of the country.

Another endemic and epiphytic plant. Perching Lily (Astelia solandri).

An interesting cellar spider.

A tractor on a rail. Demonstration of early timber harvesting attempts in this area.

Umbrella Fern (Sticherus cunninghamii).

A short hike to Pakihi view.

Native podocarp forests.

Lake Mapourika with still unusually high water level.

Skies have cleares also under the mountains as the evening came.

Camping site in the Franz Josef Village.

Enjoying the evening sun rays although it was still pretty cold.

This is how a hike to Alex Knob starts. Quite typical for every popular hike.

!"%$#!"%$#&!"$ Liars! There was not even five minutes without hearing a helicopter during the whole day!

First glance all the way to the sea.

Gently rising path going under a tree trunk.

One comes to enjoy peace and nature and then you get helicopters rattling around all the time! Long live the heavy tourism industry of New Zealand!!!

I had earplugs in my backpack by some unknown coincidence.

At Christmas Lookout. Even the view on the Franz Josef Glacier looks nicer without helicopter noise.

Vegetation changes as we are approaching forest line.

Neinei (Dracophyllum traversii)

View over the coast opens up.

And soon we are above the tree line.

On the summit of Alex Knob (1303 m).

Clouds hid the view just before we reached the top.

There were nevetheless some holes revealing the surroundings. Crevasses in the upper part of the glacier.

Majestic Minarets (3048 m) dominates the view.

Pleasant flying creature.

Unpleasant flying machine.

Someone is irritated.

Justyna didn't mind it.

Franz Josef Village down on the right.

Braided stream of Waiho River.

More vegetation from the forest line.

Many landslides around.

The main street of Franz Josef consists of four buildings that are all selling heavy tourism industry services.

Paid 500 NZD for a heli hike? Why not booking clay target shooting as well??

Or pay 70 NZD to see a kiwi indoors?

A bit outside of the town somebody came up with idea to guide people to Alpine Fault. I wonder how is the business going? I hope that they don't take them there with helicopters.

Landslides completely destroyed one stretch of the road between Franz Josef and Hokitika. They managed to rebuild temporary road just in two weeks. We were one of the first driving over it.

Time to relax from a stressful hike on a beach near Kakapotahi.

The real firewood warms up three times. First by gathering, then by chopping and by burning in the end.

Our first wild camping in New Zealand.

Enjoying the evening.

Tui feeding from flax flowers next morning.

Interesting formations in the sand.

Setting out to see more attractions in this area. Hokitika Gorge with turquoise colour is a very known one.

Turquoise river turned into gray river.

Glacier rock flour is responsible for the blue colour and this happens if there is too much of it.

Still impressed by the amount of fresh landslides in the area.

One destroyed this road that is already fixed as well.

Landslide accumulation.

Forest ground was completely covered with stones a few kilometers further along the road.

It seems as the waters were pretty high.

Maori hen or weka is a flightless (and also quite fright-less) endemic bird.

Stones were getting smaller and smaller closer to we came to the lake.

In the end, the stream eroded the existing path.

And made this bench floating in the Lake Kaniere.

Banksy would be proud of this plant with a latin name Astelia banksii.

It got warmer and warmer further north we went until the water was warm enough for swimming.

The alluvial fan as seen from the lake.

Bon appetit Jaroš.

Evening trip to Taramakau River Valley.

And to the Arthur's Pass. High uplift rates, tectonic activity and high precipitation makes slopes of the Southern Alps very unstable.

... and making any construction here very challenging.

Talus slopes on the pass.

Arthur's Pass at 740 m elevation.

Arthur's Pass village. Many of the settlements here are called just by the main function or attraction nearby.

One of the few surviving roadman's cottages, where roadmen lived with their families and mainained early highways.

Mount Rolleston (2275 m) rising above the pass.

More beech forests and kiwis.

Returning to the West Coast instead of continuing to the east. And making sure not to run over any keas.