March 10, 2011 Greymouth to Westport

Maggie’s; Pancakes and Thunder Hole; Foulwind; Archer House; Northern Exposure

Of course, our day began at Maggie’s (guess why we chose that place), a small diner where we ate breakfast. It felt like we had gone 50 years back in time, listening to music such as “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You.” I’m not kidding. And every once in awhile they’d throw in a “new” song like “Landslide” by the Dixie Chicks which must be at least 10 years old. And we even met Maggie who brought out our breakfast. But the prices weren’t the prices of 50 years ago, my poached eggs on white toast, Sugar’s cereal with canned peaches and yogurt, two orange juices, and two short whites (coffees) costing $33. Food here is really expensive. But we just had a really good ribeye dinner, the lite version no less, and the meals with a beer and a coffee cost $63, the equivalent in US $ being about $50.

En route on Route 6 from Greymouth, we stopped at Paparoa National Park at Punakaiki, home of the pancake rocks and blowholes. We walked out the path to the pancakes which are quite amazing, rocks layered one on top of another and weathered to look like piles of pancakes. The blowholes are large thunder holes but, due to the tide and lack of large waves rolling in, we only heard one “huuuunh” to remind us of our own Thunder Hole.

Our next stop was an hour or more later, at Cape Foulwind, just west of Westport, our destination. There is a walk there to the lighthouse and out to the end of the cape. The sun is out, there is the sweetest smell coming from all the yellow flowers of the ubiquitous bushes we have been calling “gorse,” with small green leaves and inch long thorns. There were so many of these bushes beside the uphill trail to the lighthouse. And we’re not too jittery after our seal experience - I leaned over to smell the flowers and a small bird in the bush startled me, and also Sugar who was approaching to smell the flowers too. We skipped the seal colony lookout. As you can imagine, we’ve had more than our share of seals.

We drove into Westport and followed the “i” signs which signify the office for tourist information where they help you to make room reservations, suggest restaurants, things to do, etc. Not many places had rooms left since there will be horse racing (trotters) in town tomorrow and Saturday, but our clerk suggested we take a look at Archer House. We drove over and fell in love with the place, its 20-foot high ceilings, funky art, its different color rooms (we’re in the Red Room), several sitting rooms, and sunny porch where we ate our lunch that we had bought at the grocery store. And as we were finishing lunch at 3:30 or so, Jackie asked us if we wanted tea or coffee and offered us freshly baked ginger muffins and blueberry muffins. They were delicious with our coffees. Check out the place online. It has quite a story. There are 3 guest rooms and we have the house all to ourselves at night.

As we were driving north from Greymouth on the winding Route 6, the sun was in my eyes and I puzzled at that. Of course, it would be since we are south of the location of the sun which is just south of the equator now. So my blog of yesterday may be wrong about the location of various sides of Mount Cook. As we first approached it, we were approaching the side in shade which would be the southern side, and when we went around to the side where the shelf is for the helicopter to drop off summiteers, that would have been the northern side. Okay, that is better.

So I’ll sign off now while roughing it at Archer House.

Love, Nat, Dad, Matt, DB