High in the Treetops at Hokitika

Wednesday 28 January

Time to explore Hokitika - Nickie and I went wandering… through pounamu stores, craft galleries and op shops! Russ was working and Louis was working on a video. In the old Bank of NSW (beautifully restored) we met Ian Phillips of IaNZ Art who creates fabulous sculptures, mainly wetas, frogs, centipedes, spiders and butterflies using old copper pennies and cents. You can commission a special piece with a coin from your birth year if you were born pre-decimalisation! Just down the road at old Bank of New Zealand, Rebecca Geary works on both stained glass windows and weird and wonderful creatures shaped from driftwood, shells, seaweed, reclaimed light shades, buttons and other recycled goods - they may not to be everybody's taste and I would not buy one, but I found them creepily fascinating!

After lunch we headed inland to the West Coast Treetop Walk. We’d been there previously but happy to go back & share the experience with the Fernandi, on a BookMe discount. The Walkway takes you 20m above the forest floor, above the main forest and on a level with the podocarps (rimu & totara) of the upper canopy. The Tower almost doubles this height with epic 360degree views and a zip wire that we watched several people ride down (we declined at $120 pp).

It was as good as we remembered; Nickie was our guide, reading aloud from the brochure at each stop and having an eagle eye for nature's detailing.

Russ was more troublesome - shaking the cantilevered walkway out towards Lake Mahināpuri as much as he could and making us all giggle! At this time of the year we were also able to see the tiny tree orchids in flower which was pretty cool.

Got a First Table booking at The Woodstock for dinner and sat in the evening sun enjoying pork crackling, lamb, surf’n’turf, a disappointingly short "foot long venison sausage" and assorted puds!

Popped down to the beach at Hokitika for an evening stroll, a visit to the bunnies and a bit of driftwood sculpting before sunset. Lovely end to the day!