Honeymoon Day 8 - Arthur's Pass


Day 8 was a big driving day for us, from Christchurch, over Arthur's Pass, to Hokitika. Luckily, it was another absolutely gorgeous day for a drive. The scenery was really spectacular over the pass as well. For the most part, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves in this post.



This is approaching the mountains from the East. Much of the drive was similar scenery to this, just gorgeous skies and cool mountains, with varying degrees of snow. However, we did stop at some really neat places. First off, we stopped for a while at Castle Hill, which has a number of large limestone rock formations reminiscent of castle walls and turrets.



There were quite a few people there, taking advantage of the good weather to rock climb, picnic, and relax around the rocks.



We hiked up to the top of the hill, about 15 minutes or so, and explored the neat rocks at the top, as well as a really great view of the valley and farms below.






Below is a truly quintessential New Zealand picture, with snowy mountain landscape becoming the backdrop for what else but sheep! There are so many sheep in New Zealand, they are just everywhere.



At Arthur's pass, we took a hike up to the Devil's Punchbowl waterfall, pictured below. The hike was reasonably short, but quite steep.



Luckily, most of the steep trail was actually stairs. We did joke though that every hike on New Zealand consisted of "let's put the trail in switchbacks straight up this hill!" We were both glad it wasn't super hot that day, but even with the wind we didn't keep our jackets on for long.



At the top, we ran into a nice Japanese couple and asked them to take our picture. They were quite surprised, I think, to find an American in New Zealand who just happened to speak Japanese.



The second half of the drive after the hike was just as beautiful.  After coming down from the mountains, we were suddenly greeted by a view of the ocean, or really the Tasman Sea, which lies between New Zealand and Australia.

The drive, though beautiful, got a bit tiring after a while. The drives were mentally taxing because the roads are all windy, and sometimes it's hard not to creep up on people through the curves. We took lots of short breaks though, which helped.  Eventually, we got to our destination in Hokitika.

Hokitika is a really small town that is good for... well... a stopping point between Arthur's pass and the glacier country a bit farther south. It used to be a gold mining town, though that industry is long gone. It did have a nice bed and breakfast though, with a lovely view.




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