West Coast Highway ~ New Zealand Day 5

We figured the best way to see New Zealand was to drive the island via car.  This is actually what a lot of people do except most rent RVs to drive the island.  We priced out our options and it was a coin toss so we went for the car and motels. I am really glad we did as I did a long three day trip in an RV before, it is not "my thing".

Now that we are here, we are really glad we rented and SUV and not an RV as the roads are really really really curvy.  Like all the time curvy up and down the mountains. 

Today we drove for seven hours along the West Coast Highway.  Once again everywhere we looked, beauty awaited.

New Zealand, at least the South Island is like one HUGE national park.

 We have decided we could live here and be very content except we would miss our family and friends so we will just simply enjoy it and try to capture as much as we can.

We found a great spot for lunch today, the rain held off and we were able to do some exploring. 

The waves were crashing against the shore and the tide was coming in giving us a sense of how powerful the water can be.

This is an interesting sign along the road, unfortunately we did not see any penguins crossing.

Two separate times we were told by locals, by the way "New Zealanders" call themselves "Kiwis", anyway we were told that Pancake Rock was a place we should go to see. 

Of course we listened to them so we took the extra 30 minutes today to so see Pancake Rock.

It is an amazing array of rock formations with the water crashing in and around the rock.

 It is called pancake rock because the rocks are thin and stack on one another like a stack of pancakes, they do not know how these rocks form so many geologist come to view this pancake rock park. We took a ton of pictures I will put just two in our blog.  Look carefully at the fist one, how many animals/ heads do you see.

There are interesting road issues in every country.

 In New Zealand, they have these one lane bridges, we have driven over more than a dozen since we've been here but today was one of the most interesting ones. 

Normally there are signs before the bridge indicating which land of traffic has the right of way so it is no big deal to cross them.  I imagine when the traffic is heavy with tourists it can take a while to get across the bridge.

 This is one of the bridges we crossed today

Not only was it a one way bridge, usually they do not have concrete sides, but this one was also a train track! 

When you exit the bridge the traffic continues to the left the train keeps going.  Good thing a train was not coming, there are no rail road barricades etc.... just look and go.

As the sun was starting to go down we got some spectacular views, I will leave you with some of our pictures.