The West Coast – barbandjay

After a very busy couple of weeks, we started to slow down a bit. Everything from Mt. Aoraki through Wanaka, Queenstown, and Fiordlands was pretty busy and booked. Even though it was off-season, it seemed necessary to have your ducks in a row a few days ahead of time, especially for the cruise. We had booked a Great Walk in Fiordlands, but it wasn’t for a few weeks. Those reservations needed to be made months in advance, and we reserved the only Great Walk available at the time before we knew exactly where we what our schedule was. We cancelled that walk. The cruise was really the last thing on our agenda. Three weeks later, and now we could start our journey, with only a general direction to guide us.

Next up was a trip to the West Coast of the South Island.

We had several ideas for where we were going to go after our cruise, but we just made it a couple of hours out of Te Anau, to a Top 10 Holiday Park in Kingston. The highlight of Kingston on this particular weekend,, was that the following day, Toyota enthusiasts were going to smash the record for the most Toyota Hiluxes gathered in one spot. 1440 gathered that day. We didn’t want to brave the crowds to see a field full of Hiluxes, but basically every car headed south that day was a Hilux.

The next day, we blasted through Queenstown with only a stop at the local Pak-n-Sav to resupply, and had a quick stop at the Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge. An historic bridge in its own right, but the fact that it holds the claim as the birthplace of bungee jumping, we had to stop. Did not jump,

We didn’t have a plan for the night, and drove by several spots on the drive, but ended up camping just past Haast Pass at Cameron Flats. It was hot as stink, really nothing too appealling about the spot, but there was a fantastic hike to the “Blue Pools.” Really pretty hike. I took a quick dip, but lasted about four seconds before the sandflies became too overwhelming.

Blue Pools. Bridge was being repaired, but you could easily swim/wade to the rest of the pools if the sandflies didn’t get you first

Going over Haast pass to the West Coast of the South Island features a waterfall about every 5 miles. We stopped at every one of them.

If you didn’t know, I am a bit of a rock-skipping fanatic. Many rocks were skipped on many bodies of water on my trip to New Zealand.

Hitting the West Coast, our first stop was a camp at Gillespies Beach, where we began to learn how to deal with the sand flies a bit better. Completely cover yourselves with clothing and DEET.

New Zealand is crazy. Ocean, rain forests, and glaciers all in one go. This is the view looking west while standing on the beach.

Aoraki’s Waka explains the creation of the mountains with St. Josef Glacier in the distance.

We had a nice evening on the beach with a couple of Kiwis, a few hands of Euchre, and a bit of wine.

The next day, we blasted through Franz Josef and took a little hike through some old growth and took a little peak at the glacier. No helicopter rides for us. We ended up at Lake Mapourika for the evening. Great spot for sunsets and early morning paddles.

Our next destination was the Okarito Lagoon, where we tried to time the tides for a paddle. We did pretty well, but the headwind coming back made it really hard to get home. thought we would spend the night there, but it was hot, and not a lot of shelter, so we went back down the road to Mapouriko for another night.

A hike that took us to overlook the lagoon before the tide came in.

It wasn’t the most picturesque paddle, but there were lots of birds to check out.

We made it to Hokitika and spent just the right amount of time shopping, museum-going, looking at the local green stone jewelry, and eating ice cream. Our objective was to paddle the Hokitika Gorge. A very small waterway with some very blue water. Most people who paddle it, come from way upstream and paddle some pretty intense Class 4 and 5 rapids to get there. Everyone else walks about a quarter mile to look at the amazing water. We built our own adventure.

Barb likes my shortcuts, and I definitely was not worried about getting a quality of life changing injury as we made our way through the bush to the river.

I worry we ruined a lot of people’s photographs, but it seemed that everyone was thrilled to see us paddling around.

I think we spent the night just outside of Hokitika, but all I have is pics of a nice sunset on the beach.

The next day was a drive further up the coast, had a great little stop at Pancake Rocks in the Paparoa National Park, and then off to our camp at Gentle Annies outside of Mokihinui. Gentle Annies is great. Showers, a wood-fired pizza oven that guests can fire up. They sell dough and sauce for you to make your own pizzas. I ended up just making “pizza” toast with bread that we had. It’s beautiful, green, and super relaxing. I talked Barb into letting us have the day off to just paddle, nap, hike around, and lounge for the day. A nearby train tunnel allowed us to have a glow worm experience all to ourselves.