Day 33 - Haast no pass, this looks familiar, no sleep 'til Hokitika.

Friday Feb 2nd
We were rebooked to do canyoning on the Niger. The email yesterday had sounded confident. However the rain didn't let up all night. The morning was dull and overcast, and the ground outside was sopping, with puddles on the lawn out side the bnb. We got on with breakfast and packing though. I was just taking my morning constitutional when my phone buzzed. Canyoning cancelled but all trips will run tomorrow with great water levels! I thanked them for their prompt communication, wished them luck with the rest of the season, we had to go to Franz Josef glacier, maybe another trip.
This was a blessing, the trip to FJG should be full of wondrous sights, and we wouldn't need to rush the drive there. We might even fit in a trip up the glacier.
We packed up, we blogged for a little while, we took our time, and left around 1000. Karen started the driving today.
We headed out of Wanaka toward lake Hawea. The route to the Haast pass takes you past some amazing views of lake Hawea and the top (north) of lake Wanaka.
As we came around the corner on the last bit of road before lake Hawea we countered a gaggle of parked vehicles next to a road sign. The sign proclaiming that the Haast pass was shut and the next update would be at 1100. Crumbs. We parked up to wait. A couple of vehicles went past, read the sign and carried on, not sure what to do we rang the NZTA and chatted to some of the other folks parked up. NZTA said the same thing as the sign, no one else had any other information. Then a woman drove past, said she'd just spoke to the NZTA, the road was open and off they went. Sweet! Off we went as well. The views didn't disappoint.

After lake Hawea, we got to the top of lake Wanaka.

We pulled into to use the loos part way up lake Wanaka, and to get some more pictures.

Link to Panorama

Karen overheard a man talking to a French couple who were sat having breakfast  about the road being closed, they'd been camped over night because the road was closed yesterday, they seemed to think it would be closed for a while; they were also on their way to the west coast and weren't sure what to do. They said the point that the road was closed from was only 15 minutes up the road, so we figured we'd go have a look, we weren't too bothered because a stranger had told us that the road was open ;)
We drove on to Makarora. Reading this, I'm sure you've guessed we found that the road was closed. The guy manning the barrier felt it would be closed for days, it had collapsed and they hadn't even got the survey team in yet let alone anyone to actually fix it. He recommended that we should head back to Wanaka, contact NZTA and see what our options were. I swapped with Karen to  drive and we headed back to Wanaka, no stopping for sight seeing now.
Getting back to Wanaka we parked up outside our bnb and leeched wifi to see what the deal was with the roads and to plan a route, Karen phoned NZTA and found out that we had no chance for getting to either Franz Josef or Fox glacier; the coast road was damaged due to land slips, flooding and the storm. We planned a route to Hokitika, it looked like we were going to see Arthur's pass after all!
We set the sat nav for Twizel and I took the first driving stint. This was going to be a long day, as there are only a few roads on South Island, with the Haast pass closed we had no option but to go all the way up the East coast of the island to the North where a pass would let us over to the west coast wand we could head back south again. Sat Nav estimate was over 10 hours to do this without breaks.

We got to Twizel about 1400 we quickly went into the town centre to get coffee, and then we had a picnic out of the back of the car. This is when we discovered we'd left our water bottles at the bnb. And we'd parked up outside it to leech wifi!
There was another Spark phone box and it was offering free wifi so Karen tried to book accommodation at Hokitika since we thought we could get there late in the evening.
Karen took over driving and we set off past the bright blue lake Pukaki and Tekapo toward Geraldine.

deja vu, been here before!

At Geraldine we found a Spark wifi on the corner; so we tried to check for our accommodation but had no reply, and we swapped drivers again before setting off on the inland scenic route toward Sheffield. We'd also decided that we would eat at the Yelllow Shack cafe, or if we missed that at the Wobbly Kea at Arthur's pass. Our route was thin on the ground for places to get food and these were the only two available without detouring, something we were keen to avoid with the journey as long as it was.
We'd been noticing how the rivers that had been dry pebble beds on our journey  down South Island were very full now.

We stopped at Glentunnel to try for more free wifi and use the loo, but the wifi needed paying for so we pushed on to Sheffield. Karen had the map open and it was telling us different distances to what I was reading from the sat nav, and I was using the sat nav to tell me whether we had enough fuel to make it. I wasn't reading the sat nav right, and so we realised that we needed more fuel than we had left in the tank to get to Hokitika. Thankfully as our tank was getting low we had good luck at Sheffield! We found a card pump site which was fairly cheap and we filled up.
When we got to Springfied, the Yellow Shack cafe was closed! We weren't the only ones disappointed, there were other cars pulling up and discovering the same thing. Nothing to do but press on to the Wobbly Kea!
As we pressed on into the mountains we got more and more spectacular views. We couldn't pass up stopping at castle hill. We both needed a quick brisk walk to stretch our legs. This would be a great place to spend more time on a more leisurely trip.

Link to Panorama

It was getting dark as we got into Arthur's pass. We noticed a Kea being photographed out back of the Wobbly kea, Karen went to take a photo while I parked the car away from the Kea (they are famous for removing the rubber from cars).

Kea decided the phone would be good to eat

At this point we discovered that the cafe had just closed. It was getting dark, and the air temperature was about 10 centigrade, if we did end up camping in the car, this was not the place to do it! We got mobile data going, and discovered we didn't have accommodation. We pushed on to Hokitika in the hope of a motel and an open take away.
Going down Arthur's path is amazing, there's a viaduct accross the gorge, and it's very steep with some very dramatic bridges.

As we came down the far side there was a large HGV being towed up the pass by a tractor. Near the bottom, the other side of the road had a huge queue of HGVs and cars waiting to go up the pass. We can only presume that these lorries had planned to go through the Haast pass and had also had to detour and couldn't get up Arthur's pass without help, hence the queue as they waited to be towed up.

We got into Hokitika round 2150. Everything was closing or closed apart from a few bars, the fish and chips shop was shut when we came round the town centre for the 2nd time. The New World wifi wasn't letting us get onto the internet, so we pulled up on the high street and burnt a bit more mobile data. Karen found us the Annabelle Motel. When we arrived the lights were out, and all was dark. Karen tried the door to reception fortunately there was someone in, and they had a room for us for the night and they had a vacancy for the next  night if we needed it. As an added bonus, it also had a spa bath! It was a real relief to have somewhere to stay for the evening and to stop driving,
We settled for marmite toast and chocolate mud cake for tea since that was the food we had brought with us, before trying the Spa bath and then getting some sleep. Setting off this morning felt like a completely different day. We were in Hokitika 2 days early, so we were going to need to re-plan a few things.