Pancake Day - a month or so early!

Sunday 25 January

A spot of sunshine as we left the NZMCA at Westport North Beach (waving a quiet goodbye to the Leopards), and hit the misty twisty turny road south - accidentally forgetting to visit the wild pie shop (nearly had to turn back but that’s too hard with a convoy of 8m caravans!)

Trekked down the coast, through Fox River with its busy Sunday Market and Punakaiki with its pancake rocks and settled into Gumboot Paradise, a cute POP in Barrytown - with 5 gravelled parking spaces in a well planted pretty area with galloping cows in the field next door! Love the Te Reo numbering of the spaces - whilst the North Island has generally accepted and worked to include the Māori language & culture, it is less prevalent down south - something that Ngāti Waewae, the west coast iwi, is working hard to redress. Shelley, the owner, greeted us and said we were welcome to use the new fire pit so after lunch and the Fernandi’s visit to the Paparoa Experience (we went last time we came through here in October and loved it) we hit Pakiroa Beach by the McMillan Road freedom camp we had previously stayed at, to collect driftwood.

The beach here is fabulous and has a fascinating tectonic cliff shift at the northern end. We followed the path into the gap between the two separated chunks of cliff amd discovered a vast cathedral like void - it was stunning! Some of the driftwood was too fabulous to add to the fire pile - one tree had stones pulled up within its roots, I found a root like a grumpy camel, some grey wood had grown round a hard stripy stone, one root shape had been stood up like a dancer and the tessellated red wood just pleased me aesthetically!

By this time it was nearly high tide so we drove up to Dolomite Point to check out the Pancake Rocks and blow holes of Punangairi (the original Māori name for the misspelled Punakaiki!) The main blowhole was on top form - sometimes just a puff of mist, other times a gush of heavy water like a jet hose. You could watch the waves crashing into the inlet then hitting the square gap at the bottom of the cliff and being funnelled up through the chimney of the blowhole under immense amounts of pressure.

The waves were roaring and crashing against the stunning rock towers and blasting through the blow holes, often drenching unsuspecting tourists! There were so many visitors - we were very taken with these two Japanese women in very contrasting outfits… a stylish shiny red coat, jaunty hat & cool shades versus a hobbit sack dress and matching hat & shoes!

It was a brilliant time to visit and we spent ages watching the sea surging and booming into the channels and caves of the area. Luckily not too long though as a levy to park has been added in recent months to recoup some of the spending on the infrastructure supporting the tourism industry of this place. We left without overstaying our car parking time and headed back to Gumboot Paradise. Shortly after arrival, Russ realised his back tyre had got a massive puncture and gone completely flat. Neither his Ute jack nor our caravan jack would lift the chassis high enough so he had to call out the AA before dinner (and pancakes - would be rude not to after visiting Pancake Rocks) and a campfire 🔥