Day 45: Greymouth

This morning I woke up to blue skies for the first time since reaching the west coast. I guess they don't call it a rainforest for nothing.

My bus for Greymouth left in the morning and had several stops along the way, mostly just to give us a break to get some breakfast or lunch and stretch our legs. We stopped in a small town called Hari Hari to buy a snack and use the bathroom. While waiting for the other passengers I stood outside in the nice warm sun for the first time in a couple days. There were another three and a half hours left on the bus ride, I don't know how anyone wanted to sit down while they had the chance to stretch.

Next we stopped at a town called Hokitika where a few people got off and a few people got on. We had half an hour at this stop so I wandered the streets briefly. I saw my first rainbow of the day, the result of a sunny day in a rainy area. This town was also right on the beach so I got a good look at the ocean. Someone had stuck some logs to spell out Hokitika in the beach (at least I think that's what it spelled or was trying to spell).

I know those aren't blue skies, but if I turned the camera 180 degrees you would see blue skies.

What do you think it spells?

For the last stretch of the ride I fell asleep, and woke up when we arrived in Greymouth. Most everyone on the bus went straight to the train station to catch the train to Christchurch, but I won't be doing that until tomorrow. I walked into town to find Noah's Ark Backpackers, my lodging for the night.

The hostel is great, the rooms don't have numbers, they are differentiated by animal. I'm sleeping in the penguin room, the monkey room is next door. My room is filled with all kinds of penguin decorations, posters, pictures, and someone even painted a penguin scene on the wall. 

On the left are penguins living in Antarctica, and on the right penguins backpacking in New Zealand. On the bottom you can see my laptop open to a draft of this post.

After checking in and dropping off my bags I started to explore. I had heard that Greymouth had a great wilderness trail, and I had seen signs for it when I got off the bus. The trail starts along the edge of the Grey River, which is where Greymouth gets its name. There was a lot of information about Greymouth's history along the path and I took my time reading it. I had nowhere to be. Ever since people settled here in the mid 1800s, the Grey River has been a flood risk. It came to ahead in 1988 when the river flooded twice in one season, causing damage to hundreds of homes. A few years later they built a flood wall, and the wilderness trail started along the top of that flood wall.

I followed the path over a bridge to the other side of the river and by an estuary. The estuary was interesting because there were a lot of conservation efforts being put in place to keep the environment healthy. A type of fish called a whitebait uses the estuary to lay their eggs, so if the habitat continued to be destroyed, the fish would have nowhere to breed. I even saw shuttles with environmental volunteers parked on the road, and people walking into the wetlands to do some work. They were planting native plants and constructing waterways for the fish. I didn't actually see that happening, but I read about it on a sign along the path.

I tried to walk into the estuary myself, but within a few minutes I was confronted by a path that had been overrun by one of the many water trails winding through the grass. I had to turn back, only to watch a volunteer cross with ease wearing high top rain boots.

I wasn't ready to spend the rest of the day with wet feet.

It was over this estuary that I saw the second rainbow of the day. The day was full of small sunshowers so it was the perfect conditions for a rainbow.

Also a nice view of the estuary. Greymouth is the town on the right in the background, I think the town of Nelson is on the left, but don't quote me on that.

Eventually the path came to one of two breakwaters that run parallel to each other as Grey River meets the ocean. The waves here were huge. In the summer it must be a prime surfing spot because the only building on the breakwater was a surf shack that had been boarded up for the season.

I got as close to the water as I dared because every so often a wave would come splashing up over the rocks in a sudden burst. There were many moments when I whipped my head around as I heard a wave crashing in on itself, afraid that I was about to be swept off into the cold water. But fortunately I remained at a safe distance, and only got caught by a light salty mist. These really were some big waves though, do not come to Greymouth if you are an amateur surfer, these waves are saved for the serious guys.

The water was great, from a distance.

I checked one of several trail maps put up along the path and saw that there was a trail to a cave just off the bridge I had crossed earlier. So on the way back I decided to take a look. The cave was short five minute walk from the bridge, but when I got there I immediately turned back. I was confronted with a small dark entrance into nothing. I had no lights, not boots or equipment or anything. I had no idea what was in that cave but I knew just by looking that nothing good would come of this. It was on the five minute walk back to the bridge that I established several new spelunking rules for myself:

1. Always bring a light, and a back up light.

2. Always bring a spelunking buddy, and a back up buddy.

3. Wear proper foot attire, and maybe back up foot attire just to be safe.

I was not ready for this.

Once I was back over the bridge and back in town I quickly walked back to my hostel to grab my portable charger to keep my phone from dying, and then ran back to the river to try to catch the sunset. When I got back the sun was still up, but there were big rain clouds on the horizon, blocking most of the show. There was still some great colors though. (See the thumbnail for the picture of this)

I found a pizzeria in town and sat down for dinner. I ordered the classic cheese-less pepperoni and felt great. Then the pizza arrived. I'm not sure what they did at this restaurant when it came to pizza, but they did not put tomato sauce on it. At first glance I thought it was barbecue sauce just based on color, but it had a strange sweet taste to it. I couldn't identify it for the life of me, bt whatever it was, it didn't belong between pepperoni and pizza. I didn't want to be the guy that sends back a whole pizza because that felt wasteful. So I made myself eat it. Each mouthful gave me weird-taste shivers, but it was food, I was hungry, and I didn't want to be rude.

I kept my mind off of my tastebuds by reading Aziz Ansari's book Modern Romance. I started reading this a while ago, but finally picked it back up since I had finished my other books. The book has a lot of interesting facts about how romance has changed in the last fifty years. From arranged marriages to Tinder. It's really interesting, so if that kind of topic interests you definitely check it out.

My train to Christchurch doesn't leave until 1:45pm tomorrow, so I don't need to go to sleep early, but I still will, because it's a good habit to keep up with. The train ride is supposed to be very scenic so I am looking forward to that. The next day or two probably won't be as exciting as the last few have, since I'll be doing a lot of traveling, but there's still a lot of great stuff left to do here in New Zealand, so don't give up on me yet.

Thanks for reading and here's to tomorrow.