Day 11 - Punakaiki & Arthur's Pass

We woke up this morning in Punakaiki, which is home to the famous blowholes and pancake rocks.  We got to the national park right at sunrise so that we could catch viewing the holes and rocks right at high-tide.  It's difficult to capture the essence of these natural phenomena on film, but we did our best.

Here is a picture of the Punakaiki Resort hotel that we stayed at right on the beach.  I think there was only one other couple staying there the night we did.  It was an interesting property to say the least.  Hotel was very clean and nice.  Mindy and I decided to "upgrade" to an "eco-suite".  Turns out that "eco-suite" means further away from the beach!  We couldn't understand how the hotels priciest rooms (remember, this is the off-season, so they rooms weren't that pricey) were the furthest away from the beach.

At about 10AM, we got on the road to head to Arthur's Pass national park.  Arthur's Pass is the main route to get between Christchurch and the west coast.  The road to Arthur's Pass was beautiful as usual!  Here are three pics from the drive, two from around Punakaiki and one right before the pass.

We found an awesome hike after talking with the information desk at the park.  We decided to hike up the Temple Basin Ski Area.  In short, think of this as hiking up to Tuckerman's Ravine at Mt Washington in New Hampshire.  You have to hike up to the base of the ski area in order to go skiing!  The difference is that Temple Basin actually has a ski lodge (people can spend the night) and a few ski lifts (ok, rope-tows).

Here are two pics from the hike!

The 1.5 hour hike up to the ski area was well worth it.  Check out these pics of the ski area!  It wasn't open yet - sounds like ski season doesn't really start until end of June or beginning of July.

After hiking back down, we got a coffee at Arthur's Pass Village and made our way to Franz Joseph Glacier for the night.