Arthur's Pass National Park

After landing in South Island, we rented another car and headed west to the coast through the  Southern Alps. This area was formed by the glaciers and not volcanic activity.

Who's Arthur you may ask?

Arthur Dobson was the man credited in 1864 with hiking into this pass on his way to the west coast. After gold was discovered on the coast, 4000 people wanted to cross this mountainous pass. In 1866 the first stage coach (see picture) started carrying people instead of hiking. The stage coaches carried 14 people and pulled by 5 horses. That's 14 people without benefit of deoderant on that small coach. The local museum has one of the original stage coaches imported from New Hampshire.

Today we did a hike to 'Devil's Punchbowl'. It only took an hour round trip and it was beautiful. The cool picture taken through the stone wall was taken while standing on the porch of a small stone house. Sam wouldn't come up to the house because of a little sign saying 'private property'. He said I was being snoopy, but there was no sign saying 'no trespassing'---a loophole. The windows were covered with steel shutters otherwise I'd have pictures of the inside, too.

Tomorrow we will continue on another 150 miles to the coast and to the glacier area. We have a 3 hour glacier hike planned in 2 days where we are dropped off from a helicopter on the top of a glacier. You would think that in this time of glacier melting, global warming, etc that this type of adventure would be discouraged but apparently not in the name of tourism.

I hope things are warming up and spring is coming at home.
Thanks for tramping along with us.
Xxoo