Arthurs Pass

From Greymouth, we realised Arthur's Pass was only over an hours drive away. The west coast of NZ is well known for gold mining and Arthur's Pass was used years ago for the industry. It was a beautiful sunny day and the drive was spectacular - the village of Arthurs Pass is the highest settlement in NZ and is the base for ski-ing in winter and trekking in the summer. In the village we saw our first Kea, the mountain parrot which lives only in the South Island. They have really cheeky personalities and are well known for biteing the rubber off cars.......they even tried to steal D's car/house keys from a table - thank god it didn't manage to or we would have been stranded!!!! After a good feed at Arthurs Bar, we set off on a trail to the Devil's Punchbowl where an amazing waterfall cascaded. The falls were fierce and the spray was really refreshing in the heat! We cooled off with ice cream teasing the Keas before heading back to Greymouth on the coast!