This is a restaurant whose name dates back to the gold mining time of the 1860s. We had seen a photo of the original restaurant in the museum.
Pierre, a French chef, moved to Hokitika approximately 30 years ago and opened Chez Pierre. After doing some research on the town's history, he changed the name of his restaurant to that of the original Cafe de Paris.
The restaurant sits across the street from the Hokitika Museum which was originally The Free Public Library built around 1900 with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation.
Hokitika's Carnegie Free Library was one of 18 libraries built in NZ with the assistance of Scottish/American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The building served as Hokitika's library until it closed in 1975. It was later restored and reopened in 1998, and is now home to the West Coast Historical Museum.
Carnegie awarded grants to US and international communities to cover the capital costs of building such libraries with agreement that the communities assume responsibility for all operating expenses.
During our breakfast, the rains had increased and while paying our bill we read the forecast notice that had been written on the cafe blackboard, "Bonjour, rain with very heavy falls developing thundery from the afternoon. Rising to gale gusting 120km winds in the south during the evening. Have a great day!"
With that encouraging note, we started our drive south. Within the hour, we reached the Wanganui River Bridge and section of State Highway 6 that had been closed.
For almost a week, the damage cut off farmers and tourists traveling both north and south.
We attempted to take some photos but it was raining so hard we couldn't get out of the car. Plus, there was a long que of vehicles attempting to cross.
Large earth movers were layering and compacting gravel, stone and rock to repair the 40m section of washed out road. In order to do so, they had to reroute the river away from the temporary roadway and build the temporary roadway up to the remaining, undamaged bridge span.
Contractors redirected the fast-flowing river using large boulders, which then allowed them to pour 1000 cubic meters of gravel to build up the riverbank and reform the road where it would join the bridge.
This second storm of rains was threatening the passage again and the attempts continued to keep the river flowing under the span and not wash away their work.
Digger operator Ron Scott says it’s been hard work.
“It's been a bloody big job. Things are starting to get a bit short and everyone is doing long hours and getting a bit titchy on the end, and now it’s getting pretty good,” he says.
Once over the bridge, we continued to an area called Fox Glacier where we were to report in with Fox Glacier Guiding for our helicopter trip to a spot on the glacier where we would begin our 2 1/2 hour glacier hike. With pouring rains it wasn't looking too good.
When we arrived at the guiding center we saw the cold, wet hikers coming off their bus. They had made an earlier trip up and after 40 minutes had to come down.
Here is the report of weather conditions on the glacier.
If you can't read it, it says 140km winds at 1000 meters, 150 km winds at 3000 meters and freezing air level is 3500 meters.
Needless to say, our trip was cancelled.
We sat down at the little lodge, had tea and wrote some postcards to the grandkids.
With the rains still pouring we ventured on, stopping at a strange little roadside restaurant that was actually a Salmon Farm with a cafe.
Jerry couldn't help but take a picture of his Whitebait sandwich.
The story about Whitebait and Whitebait fishermen is a long one. I will just tell you that Whitebait is prepared by mixing all these tiny little almost transparent whole white fish with an egg mixture and frying it in a pan.
We arrived at our destination, around 3pm with the rains still coming.
The Wilderness Lodge, Lake Moeraki.
No comments:
Post a Comment