NZ Travels: Franz Joseph and the drive to Hanmer Springs

Travelling New Zealand: Duration 3 weeks: December 2008: Day 9

To say it rained all night is an understatement, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such torrential rain and that’s saying something living in the UK.  It rained all night and was still raining in the morning, everywhere was flooding!  Consequently our trip was cancelled, and the forecast was for gale force winds and heavy storms for the remainder of the week on the west coast so we decided to cut our losses and instead of staying the second night in Franz Joseph as planned, we left and headed north up the West Coast.  I had to re-plan the journey as a result as it meant everything had to move forward a day, not a great idea when you’ve had hardly any sleep due to the noise from the rain. 

We knew we were in for a long drive, we were headed across the mountains from the West coast to the East coast of the south Island – ultimately to Kaikoura on Friday night.  We had decided we would just get as far along the drive as possible and stop when we felt tired – possibly in a place in the mountains along the Lewis Pass called Hamner Springs, which is a ski resort in winter and a spa resort in Summer.

We didn’t really stop on the way as the weather was so horrible, apart from in Greymouth for a quick loo stop and a drink (don’t go there it lives up to its name – horrible grey industrial place!).  The weather was still really bad although we could see brighter skies ahead as we left the West coast so we hoped for sunshine!!

The sky definitely got brighter, we travelled over a pass in the mountains called the Lewis pass which where the roads were very high and winding, and we stopped to take some pictures of an amazing valley which the Waiau river runs through.  Absolutely beautiful scenery here.  We finally arrived our destination, Hanmer Springs.

Hanmer Springs is a spa resort in summer and ski resort in winter.  It has natural thermal pools there so we found our holiday park, parked up and then walked into the town to have a look. 

It’s very “alpine”, clean and well kept in Hanmer Springs, with the main attraction at the moment being the thermal pools.  We ate in a nice bar/pub which was one of the best meals yet (avocado and macadamia nut dip was fab! ) and decided to go to the spa attached to the thermal pools in the morning.  We figured we deserved a treat to make up for the fact that we hadn’t been able to do the heli-hike trip on the glaciers.