{"id":627,"date":"2009-06-21T20:01:25","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T00:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/?p=627"},"modified":"2012-10-10T20:16:56","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T00:16:56","slug":"restoring-our-honeymoon-blog-days-11-12-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deridder.ca\/blog\/?p=627","title":{"rendered":"Our Honeymoon blog: Days 11 & 12"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Island Day 11 & 12 – Arthur’s Pass, Punakaiki, Westport, Buller Gorge<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n
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Day 11<\/strong><\/span>
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So as I mentioned in the previous post.. We had stayed the night at an amazing spot beside Lake Pearson.. Very picturesque..<\/span>
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The window was pretty dirty, but I had to take a pic to show our view waking up and eating breakfast.. A duck even swam by (you can see it bottom right)<\/span>
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So anyway, once we got up (pretty early due to a lot of driving planned), we continued on towards our goal of Porter’s Pass (Michelle’s maiden name!)<\/span>
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We stopped at a few sites of course along the way.. the first one being a little cave, in the middle of fields of boulders. Bouldering is a very common thing in this area.. Apparently a great place to hone your skills for rock climbing.. We saw a couple folks along the road walking with their mats.<\/span>
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We walked towards the exit of the cave first, and came across a sign.. I was amazed this was the only thing around.. Anyone was welcome to go caving here – open to the public. Just some basic warnings..<\/span>
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A high school (or maybe older grade school) group came while we were walking back to the camper actually, all dressed in water suits going for a class trip through the cave..\u00a0 That would be a great class trip!<\/span>
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I checked out the exit a little.. I could see where the water fell out of site, there was a metal ladder built into the wall, so the caving was somewhat assisted.. I really wished I had some gear to walk it..<\/span>
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We walked to the entrance, but couldn’t get too close since you had to walk through the river first anyway.. The closest we got was just around the corner of the entrance you see below..<\/span>
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We continued on, and got some funny pics at Porter’s Pass..\u00a0 The speed limit sign happened to match Michelle’s age \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 <\/span>
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To Mish’s delight, there were all kinds of Porters stuff.. Ski Hills, Rivers, etc..\u00a0 Here is another example:<\/span>
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From that point, we turned around, and headed back towards HWY 6 along the coast, stopping at the spots we noted while heading here.. like Arthurs Pass and castle hill.. First was Castle Hill, with more great bouldering. It was actually an ancient Maori village area, since they could find shelter in the rock’s nooks and crannies..<\/span>
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Many of them took on shapes, like the one above as I’m sure you can see the begging dog..<\/span>
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The one below looked a little like a face coming out of the ground at certain angles..<\/span>
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The area was pretty big.. and the rocks are bigger then they look in these pics..<\/span>
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Mish took this one, which I really like:<\/span>
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Here is one to try and give you some perspective of the size of some of them.. (I got heckled when I did this ‘fake climb’ by some guy walking by “That doesn’t look real at all man!”)<\/span>
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There was some great architecture.. including this bridge through part of Arthur’s pass..<\/span>
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And some protective shelters for the road (one for common landslides, the other for a waterfall \/ stream)..<\/span>
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Through this drive, some of the rivers had a reddish moss growing on the rocks.. Looked kinda weird<\/span>
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Once we got back to the coast, we drove up to the pancake rocks (Punakaiki), though we\u00a0missed high tide, so no blow hole action (waves can sometimes splash up in-between these stacked rocks). <\/span>
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Once we got to Westport, we called it a night at a camp ground just across the road from a huge beach – Carter’s Beach.. So after dinner, we headed over, and watched the sunset.. It was a gorgeous one! I took a million photos, but I’m sure you’ll be happy to know I only posted a couple here..<\/span>
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The tide was just changing, so it was leaving a great thin layer of water over a lot of the beach.. made for great mirror shots!<\/span>
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The pic below is looking back towards the campsite pretty much.. <\/span>
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We heard it was looking like rain for the next couple days, so we weren’t sure how to handle that with our plans..<\/span>
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Day 12<\/strong><\/span>
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It turned out the day was going to be a wet one.. So we had to postpone a couple of our plans.. We didn’t actually have anything left that was pre-booked until our last day whale watch, so our plans for horse riding, and sea kayaking were being threatened.. <\/span>
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We hoped the rain would go away by the next day, so we planned to just drive towards where we were going to do some horse back riding. We drove north through Lyell, a semi ghost town, which had a near-by\u00a0swing bridge. <\/span>
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I had a very tough time making it over the swing bridge (thanks to my fear of heights)! Mish went on ahead and tried to get people to stop coming over (it was really tight to fit two people), but they just kept coming.. I kept waiting for some space so I didn’t have to lean over the edge to let someone by.. But eventually, I had to suck it up and head across.<\/span>
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We opted for the zip line back… Which you can see the lines for on the right in this photo:<\/span>
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They call it the ‘supaman’ style… It was pretty\u00a0fun, though easier then expected\u00a0since you jump off the ledge\u00a0over land and zip line across the gorge.. I was worried I would be jumping over the gorge.. Here I am getting suited up..<\/span>
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And here is a video taken by Mish before she headed across.. (Sorry its sideways.. turn your monitors on their side to see it straight! )<\/span>
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