We had a little excitement, Southeast Kansas style, last Monday in Christchurch.  A tornado hit about 3-5 miles from where we were staying.  We heard a loud noise and the wind starting blowing quite strongly.  We found out later that a tornado had killed two people from flying debris not far from us.  A grill got blown across the patio and a propane bottle was blown over but no other damage.

We left Tuesday morning heading northwest across New Zealand’s South Island.  The entire spine of New Zealand from the North Island through the South Island is the Southern Alps as they’re called.  We were headed through Arthur’s Pass.

Our goal was Paparoa National Park midway between Greymouth and Westport on the west coast.  Specifically, we were headed to the Pancake Rocks.  We found a three bedroom cottage about a mile down the road from them.

The first look here was Tuesday afternoon and it was raining pretty hard.  We covered up our cameras and made the best of it.

The next morning the sun was trying to come out and we were able to put our tripods down and shoot some slow shutter speed blurred water shots before the rain started up again.  And ‘no”, I don’t know why they’re called the Pancake Rocks.

The last image is of one of the blowholes in the rocks.

Wednesday night was spent with Toni’s brother at his home on the northeast corner of the South Island near our ferry location in Picton.  On Thursday we made the three and a half hour ferry trip back to the North Island.  We were lucky on both of our trips on the ferry.  It was a extremely calm sail across the Tasman Sea.

After a repeat visit with David’s friends, Chris and Jackie, we headed back to David’s on Friday.

Tuesday I fly from Tauranga to Auckland for one night before catching a 6am flight to Melbourne, Australia to meet another David, a roommate from my Iceland trip a year ago.

More from Australia in my next post.