So today we leave the mountains and return to the sea, our drive is only a couple of hours but we have a number of walks and viewpoints we have picked out on route. We started by heading back towards Fox Glacier and we thought we would try to see the mountains one last time but unfortunately they didn’t want to come out this morning so we set off towards Haast. Our first stop was Bruce Bay not sure who he was and why he has a bay but it is in the top 10 of New Zealand’s favourite beaches – no idea why as you can’t really get onto the beach very easily all the same we managed it and got totally windswept which became a bit of a theme for the day! Our next stop was Monro beach, the car park is actually about 45 minutes from the beach through rainforest which was nice but a little damp underfoot. There are sometimes penguins nesting on this beach but unfortunately not today, or if they were we didn’t see them but to make up for this the sea is really spectacular, the wind is blowing making the waves crash over the rocks, we haven’t really seen the west coast beach since pancake rocks so it made a nice change and was quite spectacular. By the time we got back to the car it was lunch time so we had our picnic in the car park then continued the drive. The next stop was Knights Point view point which is a lookout at the top of the hill literally just 5 minutes up the road from Monro beach – had we know we might possibly have gone there for lunch! The view from the top was great and the sign said that there is 50km of beach to our left which is a lot of beach and we couldn’t see a single person on it! Our final walk was at Ship creek which is another point where the rainforest meets the sea, again with the possibility of penguins but none in evidence today. We walked all the way round the board walk to a lagoon which formed over time by the tides bringing in sand and creating a sand bar causing the sea to get trapped thus causing a lagoon. This is now freshwater lagoon as the foliage that has grown round the edge has purified the water over time, it looks like reeds but is actually a type of bamboo. The lagoon is home to a variety of wildlife including tuna and heron but although something jumped out of the water as we were walking past we didn’t see what it was! We called into the tourist information in Haast as I was sure that we had missed something as this area seems to be in the middle of nowhere and we must have chosen to come here for some reason, but it would seem that it is in the middle of nowhere and we obviously thought that would be nice! In reality it was to break up what would have been a long drive as we are on the move again tomorrow. We drove round to the B&B and dropped our bags before heading back into town this evening for something to eat.
