After Jack taught the dairy class on Tuesday morning, we left to go to the west coast. Floods had been predicted for the South Island so we had to work around them. It only takes 3 hours to drive to the west coast but you pass over some beautiful country. At Arthur’s Pass we stopped to hike the “Punchbowl”. It was a beautiful waterfall but the 335 stairs one way were difficult for the old parents. Tyler and Coy ran up and back in about 30 minutes. It took Jack and me at least three times that long. The boys were amazed by the transformation to more of a tropical rain forest that exists on the west coast.
We spent the night at Franz-Josef and hiked to the glazier the next day, up a wide river bed. We were all snapping pictures of the lush forest, the waterfalls, the wonder rocks and the large flow of ice.