Day 10: Fox Glacier-Haast
My West Coast Weather bingo card for today! Let's go through it.
The hail was most impressive. It looks a lot like rain to begin with, but then the rain doesn't splash on the road but bounce, and when it hits the helmet it goes "clack", and it stings when it hits your arms and hands - even with raincoat and gloves. One even managed to hit my nose, which I haven't had before.
Also, these weren't the dull icy spheres I've had before: they were unusually big, square smooth pieces of clear ice. So smooth and bubble-free they could go in an upmarket cocktail.
From left to right: The hail! (this taken while actually getting hailed on, btw). How the day started: blue skies! Interesting bridges! And more! High rivers from the rains yesterday. Nice light - strong sun with little indirect, because there’s very dark clouds all around. Another. Low fog. A break in the rain. Just after the deluge finished; I didn’t want to risk any photos during.
Monsoon rain was not on the weather forecast. Yesterday had the Orange rain warning, which I had carefully avoided. (Not fully: I needed to go outside for a few minutes in the evening. My jeans took the full force of the rain, which was heavy and diagonal, and so nasty I didn't even try to get a photo. The jeans got instantly drenched, of course. They were hung up to dry overnight and they're still not fully dry.) But the rain forecast for today was 10% of yesterday's. I'd even checked the hourly rates, they were "mild shower".
A bit before Brown's Bay the rain kicked in, went up from "mild shower" to "actual shower", and a healthy westerly joined the fun. I was in the full wetweather gear, including webbing with flashing lights, feeling like I was in a washing machine. I went grimly through Brown's Bay looking out for a tearoom or cafe or take anything where I could get a coffee and wait it out. Water is sheeting off my arms. My socks were so drenched they went squelch when I pedalled. It feels like my raincoat stopped working, because my arms and shirt were wet, and I'm sure it wasn't sweat.
Eggs were being sold at the town hall, and I was tempted to go look at them. There was a food truck selling ... I don't know, they were to windward so I couldn't see, I'm sure they sold hot drinks but no shelter means no sale.
I could hear the sea, and caught the occasional glimpse of waves breaking, but since that's where the wind and rain were coming from I wasn't keen to take a look or stop. I'm sure it's lovely.
There were no tearooms or cafes, sadly. In fact today ended up being a straight run all the way with only a very brief stop for a sandwich. However, if "small plague of sandflies" was on the card I could tick it.
From left to right: signpost has more character than I do. Lunch view. This is one of the many waves of sandflies that attacked over lunch. More NZ views. And more. A bridge name worth stopping for. Is “mountains boil” a bingo square? More bridges.
Thunder! There were a couple of rolls early on, and a brief flash of lightning but it was a few kilometers away so it didn't get exciting.
And the sun did come out to mix things up. It was so clear and sunny in the morning that I was generous with the sunscreen. I did stash the raincoat in the pannier pocket because I'm not a slow learner.
It probably changed from hard rain to blistering sun at least three time, so the raincoat and webbing got packed away and put on a few times.
One side-effect from the abrupt changes from wet to sunny is that it looks like the road is steaming, as the surface water warms and evaporates. It's so wispy it can only be seen with a good long sightline, but it happens so often around here it should be a bingo square.
From left to right: Nice spot on the verge where I pulled over. Evaporating surface water. Slightly chaotic selfie on a bridge. Knights Point islands, a one-handed gamble-snap taken while on an excitingly steep downhill. Rather chaotic selfie on another bridge. Picked this up somewhere along the way. The view this evening; no hint of the earlier madness. Venison for dinner! And a cheesecake so outsize I had second thoughts.
In conclusion, West Coast Weather Is Pure Chaos, but frankly everyone should know that already.
