Greymouth to FJ
 

Please advise,I am getting conflicting information. We want to know how long it would take to drive from Greymouth(disembarking the TranzAlpine) to Pancake Rocks and then to Hokitika or the same drive ending at FJ. Is it a feasable drive to go all the way to FJ?

http://www.aatravel.co.nz/main/index.php

Use the "Time and Distance" link.

Pancake Rocks = Punakaiki

To Greymouth is 44 km or 40 minutes one way. You should be able to check the other links. Just depends on how much time you have. I prefer to stay in Hokitika overnight, but others have gone all the way to FJ.

There is a glow worm dell in Hokitika which is fun for a night time visit. Bring a small flashlight. Plus you can browse the jade galleries in town.

Yes, it's feasible to go all the way to FJ from Greymouth with a side trip to Pancake Rocks - Greymouth to FJ is about two hours and 15 minutes. Greymouth to Pancake Rocks is about 40 minutes each way as mentioned above.

If you're traveling in the NZ summer, the days will be longer and you should have plenty of daylight. If traveling in the winter, well your days will be shorter, so keep that in mind.

Hoki is very much worth a stop as well, so it really depends on how much you want to see and do.

Here's another distance calculator just to confuse you further. We've found it to be pretty accurate.

http://www.accommodationz.co.nz/distances2.html

We did exactly that - tranzalpine to Punakaki to FJ. It was a long drive, but we had a lot of rain for the last half of the driving. Got to FJ at 8 PM, then had supper. It is feasible. We did that to do the glacier hike in the AM.((*))

It really does depend on the time of year. It gets dark so early in the winter (and those roads get SO trecherous after dark that it isn't safe). We took the TranzAlpine and then drove to Fox Glacier (about an hour farther than FJ) with a short stop in Hokitika for lunch and we barely made it before dark. I had wanted to go the Pancake Rocks, but there is NO way we would have been able to get any further than Hokitika (and the following day we had to get to Te Anau, so we were really pushing it). Just have to go back in the summer :-)!

Many thanks to Melnq8, Jed and jcasale. I have learned much from the nice people on this site and am so looking forward to our NZ trip. I haven't been yet but already want to go back. We will be traveling November 19 from Greymouth to FJ and staying at Punga Grove (often recommended).I do not know how long daylight will last then but will give consideration to both options.
Thanks again,
Frank

You can get daylength for any location at the following site:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html
Just plug in the latitude and longitude, which you can get from here:
http://www.mapsofworld.com/lat_long/...-lat-long.html
You'll need to convert from decimal degrees to degrees and minutes (but could ignore this for a rough estimate).

Looks like sunrise on November 19 at Hontika is 06:01 and sunset is 20:42, if I've done summer time correctly.