Activity Summary
Sunday 12th February - Day 164
Hokitika day
Hokitika beach sign
National Kiwi centre
Hokitika gorge
Lake Kaniere
Dorothy Falls & lake viewpoint
Greymouth drive by
Punakaiki check in
Truman track & sunset
Monday 13th February - Day 165
Pororari river track
Pancake rocks (less blowholes)
Punakaiki cavern
Cape Foulwind
Westport check in
Summary
Hokitika
Nice small town. Could complete it within 5 minutes but we enjoyed the short time there and it was worth a stop over.
Greymouth
Much bigger place than the other places in this piece and it really didn’t have much to offer that was worth an extended visit. A drive through and forced stop was enough really.
Punakaiki
Absolutely tiny area but had a lot of interesting and beautiful things to appreciate. Much like Hokitika, well worth the stop over.
Westport
Clearly a popular place to surf. We didn’t see much of Westport given our changed plans but a short passing drive through was enough.
Accommodation
Hokitika - Pioneer Hotel
Number of nights - 1
Price per night per person - £20
Located at the back of a proper old white mans pub, it made it a little awkward and funny to check in. But the rooms were comfortable and the facilities were clean. We knew we wouldn’t have a kitchen but a bit of preplanning and the microwave sorted us right out.
Pretty good for the 1 night.
Punakaiki - Te Nikau Retreat
Number of nights - 1
Price per night per person - £23
Any place that describes themselves as a retreat is expected to hold themselves in an element of hippy light. This was no exception and based off the beaten track a bit in the bush gave a nice relaxing environment.
It was an interesting set up as it had all the hallmarks of being like a ski lodge; the rooms upstairs and kitchen and huge lounge area downstairs. Pretty comfortable minus the cretins that were staying there at the same time who had little manners and the kitchen and toilet ended up looking like it belonged in a uni household.
Westport - Bazil’s Hostel & Surf School
Number of nights - 1
Price per night per person - £15
Not a comfortable place to stay at all. The bedroom smelled terrible when we entered and only dissipated after aerating all evening. It was also a small bed which we were not a fan of.
The communal area was run down and full of what appeared like young children who were there long term working and surfing. Hearing them talk about their lack of work ethic killed Luke.
Kitchen was a shit show, the people were weird and it wasn’t comfortable. Were happy to leave this one and didn’t enjoy spending time here.
Diary
We were very well rested this morning and it gave us plenty of energy for the day. Nicola was like a born again human with the amount of comfortable sleep she's had recently.
The start of our Hokikita day was planned to the National kiwi centre but we got there really early so had a short walk around the small town and over to the beach and the crazy famous (not) Hokitika sign.
When 10am came around we were in the kiwi centre in order to catch the feeding of the longfin eels (tuna). This ended up being an interactive experience where we got to do it and then stroke them afterwards which was great fun. They’re basically blind so are hella clumsy when feeding, one giving Nicola a nice lil suck as a thank you.
Straight after was the kiwi feeding so we quickly moved on down to get ahead of the ridiculously large group of oldies that had been bussed in. We were here for a good long while waiting for the feeder to the point where we doubted whether we were in the right place. We ended up watching two glorious brown kiwi’s probing and running around for about 20 minutes which was excellent. Two Americans who could not stop talking took a liking to Nicola and so they happily chatted away (little Nicola could do at this point) when the signs said to be quiet for the sake of the kiwi’s. Luke wasn’t impressed.
The kiwi’s had zero care for the food that was eventually brought out but we did get a great kiwi shout before leaving. They are some loud birds.
The kiwi centre was pretty small so past the experiences we finished it pretty quickly, got some food from the New World and took off to Hokitika Gorge.
The gorge was a short loop track across and along the Hokitika river that has wonderfully blue waters fed from the Southern Alps. Having seen a lot of this glacial water we probably were a bit indifferent to its beauty at the time - traveller's privilege.
On our way back up the coast we decided to drive around Lake Kaniere and have a stop over for lunch. We ate at Dorothy Falls, a pretty nice spot before we started getting bitten, and then did the short walk to the lake which we greatly regretted as it just wasn’t that great.
The best part of the day was Greymouth. Lol joke it was pretty uninspiring. We struggled to find anything of note to do online and when driving through we decided to get out and have a look over the Grey river simply because it was convenient. This lasted a minute before we carried on.
We got to Punakaiki late afternoon and got comfortable. The retreat had a pretty comfortable downstairs area much like a ski cabin so just took over the space until sunset.
For sunset (at about 9pm) we cut through the retreat complex to get onto the Truman track that took us to the coastline with wicked views of the rockface. We walked along the beach and just sat peacefully until the sun was well and truly below the horizon.
Sandflies attacking Nicola (one was killed on the end of her nose) ended up sending us home a bit earlier than maybe we would have liked but the mood was ruined.
We packed up and went back to the very small area of Punakaiki to see the rest of the sights here.
Given it was fairly early, and a nice day, we decided to go for the Pororari river track which is an out and back track along the river. We had intended to just turn around when we felt like it but by the time we considered this we had nearly completed up to the AllTrails marker so just ended up finishing the 7km route. The path was easily walkable, had some nice views of the river and the dense forest was very picturesque.
Next we went to the Pancake rocks formations which was again an easy loop track. Nicola had commented that this, much like a lot of these natural wonders, would have no doubt been chargeable if it was the UK. NZ does this very well.
The rocks are pretty cool; limestone rock formations left in layers due to some geography thing blablabla. In turn there are massive caverns hollowed out but as it was such a sunny calm day the blowholes were not in full swing. But we would take the sunny weather any day over this.
On our way out of Punakaiki we stopped at the Punakaiki cavern but only got so far as the first 10m before deciding we couldn’t be bothered.
The drive up to Westport was a lovely coastal route. The sunshine brought out the wonderful turquoise blue colour in the sea. We had some stops to try to capture this but the best views were at the higher points overlooking the coast that did not have such spaces to pull in.
It wasn’t very late by the time we got to the Westport area so we drove over to Cape Foulwind and had a walk around. This was a very short exercise as the views weren’t great, we were tired and Luke inadvertently gave Nicola a migraine by catching the sun off his phone in her eyes.
Once we got to our hostel Luke put Nicola to bed in a dark room to recover. Said room smelt absolutely awful and only dissipated after we had opened and left the windows and doors open until we went to sleep. The rest of the hostel was also pretty naff; the kitchen was grim and the lounge space was run down, uncomfortable and full of what appeared to be (to Luke anyway) young surfing tools all of which seemed to be living and working here for a long time. Safe to say they weren’t doing a very good job of looking after the place and listening to them complain about work killed him.
By the time Nicola emerged a few hours later Luke was feeling pretty angsty so ran to get some emergency garlic bread (mmm carbs) to make himself feel better. Leftovers and garlic bread meant we didn’t need to cook in the shitshow of a kitchen thankfully. A dude decided to clean his rhubarb for some sort of alcoholic beverage all over our clean washing as we were in the middle of doing it, multiple times. What a dick.
We hid away in our room and very much looked forward to getting out of here.
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