Wednesday 16th February

Just before we reached Punakaiki yesterday we noticed a sign saying beware of penguins!  We didn’t know that they were dangerous or even in this area!

Apparently they arrive on this coastline between October and February to breed.  They don’t make burrows but are quite likely to make nests beneath the houses.

 

After a very good night’s sleep we woke to a beautiful day. The We(s)t Coast is not living up to its reputation.  We are being very blessed with the weather. We could hear the rollers crashing onto the rocks below The Rocks as we looked out of our veranda over the tree tops.

Breakfast, with our fellow guests, 2 Germans and 2 Dutch travellers was interesting!  Breakfast was organic muesli, home made bread, fresh fruit, yoghurt and eggs.  Roland made delicious coffee and was a perfect host.  He also gave us some suggestions for interesting places to stop.

We said our farewells at about 9.30am to give us time to go to the blow holes as high tide was expected about 10.03am.  The sound of the breakers was phenomenal and the blow holes breathtaking.  Obviously, we had to take lots of photos, it would have been rude not to! 

A school of small dolphins swam by while we were watching the waves but Linda’s camera did not have a good enough zoom to capture them.  We were amazed by the pancake rocks as the area was far more extensive than we had expected from the guide brochures.

From the blow holes we returned north so that we could walk down the Truman Track to the coast.  This is a trail through some tropical rain forest that leads down to the coast.  We managed to video some of the sea birds and breakers.

On the path back to the car we had a special encounter with a Fan Tail, but were unable to photograph it as we had the polarising filters on the cameras and the light in the forest wasn’t good enough to allow quick focusing.  Oh well, at least he gave us a personal show.

From there we turned south again, following the coastline and seeing more breathtaking scenery.  We stopped in Greymouth for coffee; this is where the trans alpine train arrives from Christchurch.  It is also where the mining disaster was in December 2010.  The town had very little to recommend it so after coffee we carried on down the coast road, passing through many small communities, even one called Chesterfield.  We arrived in Hokitika and found that it was a charming little town.  We had a wander around the shops for half and hour before driving out to the Lookout Point for a belated lunch stop.  Hokitika owes its existence to the gold rush of the 1860’s.  Gold miners from Australia and Ireland flocked to the area and within two years the population grew to 6000 which is 2000 more than it is today. Before leaving Hokitika, Ian took photos of the treacherous sand bar at the river’s mouth and the masses of driftwood on the beach; no wonder the local craft industry uses driftwood as one of its raw materials!

As we drove further south, the road took us away from the coast and we had some splendid views of wide river valleys with mountains in the background, some with snow on their peaks.

Our host, Roland, at the Rooks had recommended that we took time out of our journey to stop at the Bushman Centre in Pukekura which exhibits and sells strange bush stuff, much of it manufactured from ‘possums including possum pie.  We decided to make it our ice-cream stop of the day. We spent about half an hour wandering around and photographing the tongue in cheek signs that were around the place. 

They have a huge sandfly to advertise the centre.

We had wondered about staying in Pukekura but seeing the name of the hotel we are pleased that we didn’t!!

The pub was visited by Billy Connolly on his World Tour of New Zealand. 

Tonight’s stop is in a lovely chalet.  The area is so peaceful but we may be woken up early tomorrow as we spotted a cockerel strutting around.  There is no food provided at our site so we had to drive a few km into Franz Josef for a meal on the patio of a popular restaurant.