After seeing the beauty on the North of the South Island (see previous post) we started to slowly move south towards our next stop - Christchurch. For the road there we (quite logically) chose to use the directly opposite west coast...
Tauranga bay - another home of seal colony. But after seeing the one on Wharariki beach the previous day, this one sucked pretty hard as you could only watch the seals from a balcony 10 meters above the beach. There is also a surfspot on the beach, but the day we went there a massive swell was pumping big waves one after another so it was not really surfable (at least not for me).
Pancake rocks. The name says it all.
Big swell from previous day continued and brought some big waves crushing on the pancakes.
Hokitika Gorge - the Powerade river :) The color of the river on the picture is real, no photoshop! It is caused by the mixture of the white rock flour with the pure alpine water.
Chris and Alan trying to figure out how to catch the big trout which was laughing into their faces.
West coast means beautiful sunsets - this one in Hokitika with a creative nature-based artwork.
To cross to the east coast we used the Arthur's pass, which is the key connection between South Island's west and east coast. The road through the hills of Southern Alps was just stunning.
We stopped in the middle of Arthur's pass for one night and day to do a little hike to the Avalanche peak (quite a scary name, luckily no snow yet so we were safe). The hike was quite short but really steep (1.1 vertical kms on 2.5 horizontal) and fun and the summit offered beautiful views over Southern Alps.
After doing the hike to Avalanche peak we had some time left so we did a short walk to Devils punchbowl falls (love that name) before finishing the drive to Christchurch.
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