West Coast Trip Part 2

On Monday morning it was clear and frosty. After packing up and cleaning where we had been staying we went out to Lake Kaniere. It was rather misty on the way there but a beautiful trip. We stopped at Dorothy Falls, which are great for small kids as they are only a minute's walk from the roadside carpark.

From the same carpark it is five minutes in the other direction to the Lake. Our kids think "Lake! Must throw stones!" I am enjoying the view of the mist on the lake, with the sun above the mist.

I could not leave out a picture of the wonderful west coast bush.

After exploring this spot on Lake Kaniere we headed to Greymouth and the train trip home. We have decided that we will be having a week away over there at some point.

As is typical of us, we have heaps more lovely photos from our trip so we will put them in a web album and send a link so you can peruse them.

West Coast Trip Part 1

After we collected our bags and got our rental car, we decided the prediction of heavy rain was not correct and that we would head north to Punakaiki. Andrew and Stephen went all the way around the rocks, Rachel and I only did part of the walk as we had to go back for a toilet stop. Below are a selection of photos.

It was here that Andrew decided that if the rocks were pancakes then the sea was the milk.

We stayed in Hokitika at a holiday home through Stephen's work. We did discover that if you want to eat out you have to book - especially on the weekend. On Saturday night we tried three places before we found somewhere.

On Sunday we went to Shantytown. I like this photo, although blurry, because when Andrew was counting how many people you could sleep in this Chinese miners hut, he said there was room for six people and a cat who could sleep where he was sitting.

The highlight for Andrew and possibly Rachel was riding on the steam train. Rachel decided on the weekend, that she likes trains too.

Stephen and the kids got to pan for gold. Unlike when we did it up the Kawarau gorge, here it is guaranteed that you would find gold.

Here we are at church. We walked into church at 1:30pm which is when we are presently having church (while our building is repaired). Today at church we said "we were in church last Sunday afternoon, unfortunately no one joined us."

On the way back to Hokitika we stopped to have a look at this old bridge. When they replaced the road/rail bridge at Arahura with the road and rail on separate parts of the bridge, they moved part of the old bridge to form a historical site. Here is Andrew underneath the bridge. Rachel was asleep in the car at this point.

We went down to the beach in Hokitika where from this photo it looks like we found some sun but it was just peeking through the cloud at the right point. We were quite fortunate with the weather because although there had been heavy rain forecast for most of the weekend it didn't rain when we were wanting to go exploring.

Our trip on the train

At Queens Birthday weekend we went on the train from Christchurch to Greymouth. Here are some of the photos we took on the train.

This was how Andrew spent a good portion of the trip, looking out the window.

The train follows a different route to the road and goes up through the Waimakariri River gorge. Then it follows Broken River and winds up into the mountains through 15 tunnels and 4 viaducts before returning to the Waimakariri, where you feel like you are travelling on the river bed. From Arthur's Pass you spend 15 minutes in a tunnel which is on a steep slope On the West Coast you travel beside Lake Brunner before travelling down the Grey river into Greymouth.

This photo is of the Waimakariri river. Stephen spent part of the trip teaching the kids to say Waimakariri (instead of Why-whack-a-wee-wee).

Rachel was also taking photos but unfortunately her camera doesn't actually save the photos.

This is one of the viaducts that we crossed.

Looking down as we crossed one of the viaducts. I think this is the Broken River.

Looking back as the last carriage crosses the viaduct. The train was quite long. There were several carriages that had tour groups in them.

I am pretty sure this is Lake Sarah. This is before you rejoin the Waimakariri River. The weather was rather grey after this so there aren't many photos taken after this.

I will do a separate post or two for what we did for the two days on the West Coast.

We came back on the Monday afternoon. We were fortunate that the 5.5 aftershock in Rolleston occurred after the train to the coast had gone through, as the track was closed for 3 hours after the quake as they checked the line. I assume that if the train hadn't gone through then we would have been bused back.

Putting together the Davies present.

This blog post is for our friends the Davies who gave Andrew an electrical circuit set. Here is Andrew and Stephen putting it together. I didn't take a photo of it all together but it makes a fan and a light. Andrew keeps wanting to put it together again but asks at wrong time.

Andrew's birthday party

Here are some photos from Andrew's fifth birthday party. At his request it was a train theme again (the same as his third birthday). I was pleased with how his cake turned out.

Here he is blowing out the '5' candle on his cake.

The kids had lots of fun playing games. We were kept busy organising the games so there isn't heaps of photo, unusually for us. Here the kids are playing a memory game.

In this game they are having races with the trains. This was the last game and after this we let them play with the trains and track. Andrew wanted to do this all afternoon.