Hi this is the first day we have had attrocious weather. It rained most of the night and this morning everywhere was grey damp and poor visibility. We decided to brave the rain this morning and go down the coast southwards 30 miles to where the roads end!

The rain ceased at times and otherwise drizzled. The road runs parallel to the sea with sandunes and rainforest each side. The 3 rivers we crossed on long narrow one lane wooden bridges were very wide and fast flowing, bringing loads of silt and gravel down to the sea. They each had a sand bar right across them as they met the sea. Down the estuaries there were swing devices for catching whitebait in long nets.

As we got to the end of the road at Jackson Bay we both felt the road would soon be washed into the sea. The waves were crashing on the beaches up to the road and the hills coming down to the road were almost vertical and looked like they often had landslides. It was a very spooky road. It is a conservation area all along the coast for penguins and kiwis. There were signs all along warning of keeping clear of penguins crossing, needless to say we didn’t see any!

Jackson Bay is a scruffy place with shacks and caravans and workmen on the road.

It was an experience! We turned around and came back to the visitors centre at Haast

The visitor centre is very interesting and explains about the sandunes creation the pioneers who settled here the Maori and about this World Heritage area with the rain forest and mountains.

We had lunch at a nearby restaurant and I had whitebait salad. It was ok but the whitebait was bland and tasteless!The salad was nice😂

Lets go inland and see the waterfalls we said…..but then the rain came in and we gave up and came back to our motel. The rain is torrential now and almost horizontal but it has a warm wind with it.

I will read my book and listen to music.

The sheep in the next field look sad😳😳

Well what an eventful night! The thunderstorm started about 5pm and lasted until about 3am! The lady at our motel said she had never seen anything like the lightening before . First the TV went off no signal so we went out for dinner …the wifi was down!

We hadn’t been back in the motel and the power went. Fortunately we had our iPads for music and light and we had a torch.

The rain was persistent and at 4.30am it was so loud on the roof I felt scared.

THURSDAY

it has been raining 24 hours. We stayed in our room all morning as the deluge continued. This afternoon we travelled inland along the gorge as the rain was not so bad. We are so pleased we did as there were waterfalls everywhere plunging down the sheer mountain sides!

just wait till you see the swollen rivers and the waterfalls. As soon as I can have access to good wifi I will send them. They were unbelievable!

We have a long journey north tomorrow to Greymouth hope it stops raining by then and will post this blog whenever I find an opportunity. We are in a very remote area xxxxx