3/17 - Christchurch Airport to Arthur's Pass to Whateroa

My flight from Auckland to Christchurch, despite being unbelievably early, was uneventful. I landed in CC and immediately looked for a car to rent. The several earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks since Sept has smashed the central area of the city. Many people have left their homes, and many businesses are still closed. I wanted to just get out. After getting the car, I started out toward the west coast via Arthur's Pass.

Another area recommended by Hilary's friend John, it is a national park that crosses the Alps and has many waterfalls and walking trails. Along the way, I picked up my second set of hitchhikers. These were a couple - she from South Africa, he a kiwi - who worked for the Dept of Conservation studying the endemic birds of the area, specifically a local parakeet species that is endangered (the common themes of habitat loss and predation by rats). It was raining fairly heavily when I picked them up, and they had given up for the day clearing non-native plant species from the area. Along the way they recommended a hike in Arthur's Pass.

After dripping them off, I visited the park welcome center where I picked up a pair of rain pants. Then I set out on the recommended trail in the pouring rain. It was beautiful watching the water stream down from high in the surrounding mountains. I quit when the trail wanted me to cross a stream, grossly swollen by the rain to a raging torrent. I continued on to the coast, and briefly made my way north to the town of Greymouth, but after finding most things closed, I ventured south toward "Arab's" (my friend Sarah Shepard's father). He welcomed me with a meal of cabbage and potato and gave me a bag of apples to take with me. I was so tired from my journey that I didn't get to talk with him as long as I would have liked, but we did have a nice chat about his past work with the cockapo, and on clearing small islands of invasive predators in order to create habitat for threatened endemic species.