We woke up early to prepare for our drive this morning. We grabbed a quick breakfast from a nearby neighbourhood store and headed for the West Coast Road towards Shantytown at Greymouth. According to Google Maps, the drive was 3.5hrs long. It was windy and steep at some parts. We also went past Castle Hill and Lake Pearson which were beautiful. We were also right to follow our gut feeling and stop at places where we see many other cars parked there. Because this always means that there is a nice viewpoint nearby, something we learnt in NZ! At that moment, I was so glad we ditched the idea of taking the Tranzalpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth for self-drive!
With the stops along the way, we took longer than expected to arrive at Shantytown. It’s a not-too-big attraction that showed the history of gold miners in the town. All entrance tickets includes a ride on the steam train. We boarded the train with commentaries along the way and arrived at our destination 1.5km away. We definitely had to take some photos with the train. We also tried our hands at mining gold and brought back with us 2 small bottles of water with traces of gold haha! There were also some exhibits of the old hospitals and shops in the old town.
Although Shantytown was opened till 5pm, we had to rush off for our destination at Fox Glacier, another 2.5hrs drive away. I took the drive for this part of the journey since hubby drove here. As we headed further west, we could see the beautiful sun setting, although it was quite blinding at some times.
Here, I probably had the scariest part of the drive. Sky was turning dark real quick and we were running out of petrol. We went past a few smalls towns and tried to find their petrol stations which turned out to be closed. Hubby told me to drive on and appeared confident that the petrol could last us till town. I was so afraid the car would die on me and leave us stranded in the dark and cold!
Thankfully, we managed to drag ourselves to Franz Josef Glacier where there was a large petrol station that was still opened. We finally got to refuel the car and ourselves with some snacks. At last, I could drive the remaining hour in peace.
Accommodation for the night was the Fox Glacier Sunset Motel. I like it that our car was parked right outside our room. Fox Glacier was really quiet at night. There were some shops and restaurants along the main road and we ventured into one that was the most crowded and settled with some simple orders. And then, it was time to rest for our glacier hike the next day and pray hard for good weather!
Perrine Travels 