Feb 19-21: The West Coast from Punakaiki to Haast

Feb 19: Our first destination on the west coast was Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki.

  Our 4 hour drive from Abel Tasman to the West Coast really took 8 hours, including a short stop for lunch and another for groceries and gas. It was the classic New Zealand road with only two lanes and zero shoulder and plenty of curves.

We drove past lots of hops, vineyards, and kiwi and apple farms.

 

Despite arriving late, we were able to visit this worthy tourist site in the evening when the tour buses were gone, and it lived up to the tourist hype.

The waves crashed in the pancake alcoves and the wind blew and the rain threatened but the vistas were well worth it. The trail was surrounded by yucca called "flax," a surprisingly adaptable plant found throughout the country.

The loop trail was creatively carved into part of the hillside.

Impressive surge over the rocks.

True to the West Coast reputation, when we got to our campsite at Punakaiki it was windy and intermittently rainy but that made the Pancake Rocks bluff walk even more dramatic!Our RV backed up to the beach where we and many others caught the sunset over the Tasman Sea.

Feb 20:  We were going to kayak up the Paparoa river in the morning but it splattered rain on us so we opted for the forest walk through the dramatic river gorge instead. These gates marked the entrance to this Maori site of significance.

 The palm trees were in bloom with crazy pink flowers emerging from foot long pods.

Close-up of the flowers on the stalks.

The pod from which the flowers emerge underneath the branches.

 Dirk's cut foot was fragile, so we opted for the 30 minute round trip hike but the foliage and cliffs were spectacular.  The sun came out in contrast to the night before.

In addition to the lovely tree ferns and endless moss and other ferns, this forest had abundant palm trees....the southernmost palm trees apparently,

There are plenty of very tall trees here, but all the plants have Maori names that make them hard to remember.

Had to duck under this huge tree, covered with so many other life forms! It's top is the photo before this.

In Hokitika we visited the Wildlife Center which had a huge tank with fresh-water eels hanging around a previous visitor.

We hung around until the eel feeding at 3:00.

Fed them beef heart bits with tweezers,

Then we got to pet them! So soft---not at all slimy like they apparently get when out of water and disturbed.  Then we moved on to the Kiwi enclosure that was kept in the dark because they are nocturnal and shy.  The keeper pulled the soccer ball sized kiwi from its house and gave it a bowl of chow which it managed to eat with its very long beak for a few minutes before running around crazily and then high tailing it back to its little house. She pulled it out of its house and put it out for us to see again but it just ran around crazily and then headed back to its house. No photos allowed.

 

The drive along the rugged coast to Hokitika. 

Then headed down the coast to glacierville, the town of Fox Glacier, where the mountain was shrouded in clouds and it was raining.  The coastal road is noteworthy for having many rivers, all spanned with one lane roads that are very narrow. The traffic is sparse enough that there is usually no wait to cross.

Feb 21: The main thing to do here is take a flight up to the glacier or walk two hours to the very base of it, neither of which we wanted to do, given how glaciers are receding.  We have seen enough of that. So we opted for a lake walk with reflective views of Mt. Tasman and Mt. Cook.  Walk was nice....views not so much.

The lake itself was lovely and we actually saw a wild eel!  They are in all the fresh water here and just go out to the ocean to breed and die.

                                

Lots of big and little ferns of all types.

  The trail was rich in mosses.

                                             

Scenic Lake Matheson.

Headed further down the west coast to the Ship Creek parking area for two walks:  one to a dune lake and one to a cool swamp with giant kahikatea trees that they call "white pine" that were heavily logged to make cheese and milk boxes in the 1800's (since the wood is odorless), when the area was cleared to make pastures of the fertile coastal lowlands. They bear no resemblance to actual pine trees.

These trees are tall, with broad bases covered in all sorts of ferns, mosses, liverworts.....

Ended the day at Haast where we learned that the local restaurant served whitebait and egg fritters, made from a tiny minnow-like fish that runs up the westside rivers in the early spring. So, Dirk had to have some.  Tasted like egg!  I had venison pie which was not gamey at all since the deer here are farmed in small pastures.