Arthur’s Pass (take two)


Categories South Island Travel
Tag weather
This post was published on Wednesday 23 January 2019.

Again, having seen yet more massive storms approaching the West Coast, we altered our plans: to delay visiting Punakaiki Beach Camp by 24 hours, so we could weather the storm in Greymouth (which is true to its name...).

Anyway, before we got there, we had to drive through Arthur’s Pass. If you are new to the blog you may not have seen what it was like the first time... it could not have been more different this time.

Along the way we stopped off in Sheffield for a pie – why wouldn’t you? We needed some lunch, and were on the look out for a bakery for bread to have with some soup we had in our box of food supplies, when we saw this... well who wouldn’t!

And I have to say, although we don’t know how famous they really are, they deserve to be famous... they were truly delicious. We shared a Moroccan beef with mango chutney pie, and a steak and onion marmalade pie – and would have bought some frozen pies to have for the rest of the holiday, if we’d had a freezer!

Back to the story...

As you can see from the pie shop photo, the sun was shining beautifully, but the heavy grey clouds over the mountains ahead of us showed us what was really coming. Here is a little glimpse of what faced us on our drive through back through the mountains...

https://youtu.be/n4kag4YiYxE

To get the full force of the wind and rain, I decided to pop outside and take a video of the valley and viaduct...

https://youtu.be/lKg1iA6iS04

That little video was taken from the viaduct lookout, otherwise known as ‘Death’s Corner’. A cheery little place, not normally quite so full of wind and rain.

Thankfully there was an enormous chute carrying the water pouring off the mountain over and away from the road...

It was quite terrifying, driving in that weather, because the van is light, has thin tyres, and acts like a big sail, so is blown around quite easily by the wind – especially wind gusting at gale forces. Driving in a straight line was a major challenge, and required going at ever slower speeds!

Thankfully not long after this the wind and rain eased, and we were able to get to Greymouth safely, whereupon (of course) we wandered up to a local brewery to try some beers and have some dinner.

Tomorrow we head over to Pancake Rocks...