Arthur's Pass

Today's word is "Awesome".  That's..."Awesome".  

We left Christchurch first thing this morning, and drove towards the west coast where we were staying at Hokitika.

The route drives over the mountains, so we were first of all driving towards snow-capped peaks.

Our first stop was a Lake Lyndon, and then we parked at Castle Hill where we found Lord of the Rings style landscapes, dotted with rocks and boulders (see extra).

We then drove on towards Arthur's Pass village for lunch, but because the views were so Awesome we had to keep stopping, so lunch was at 2pm.

After lunch we drove over the summit and then stopped at a view point above Otira Gorge.  Here, a Kea landed on the car as soon as we stopped and kept looking at Sharon as she tried to get out of the car.  Kea are parrots, but are like intelligent pigeons, only more cute.  The advice is not to feed them, and to keep your car doors shut of they'll be in there rooting through your stuff for food.  We could hear the bird running about on the roof of the car, and it took Tim waving something at it to get it to fly off and stop trying to eat bits of rubber trim.  

From this viewpoint we had some Awesome views down the road down from the pass.  

Our next stop was at a footbridge over the wide snowmelt river (see main blip).  This bridge was very long, wobbled in the middle and had a sign saying only five people at a time were allowed on.  At the far end, there was a rope bridge down to ground level - this said just one person at once was allowed on.  We decided not to venture onto it!

From there we drove on to Hokitika where the sea was in full power Awesome mode in the high winds (see extra).

An Awesome dinner of BBQ chicken pizza, followed by Apple, Caramel and Blueberry dessert pizza rounded off the Awesome day, and we returned to the hotel via Sunset Point (it was cloudy) where we were buffeted by the winds as we climbed to a viewpoint.