Punakaiki Hostels - Reviews and Rates

Day Seventeen - Punakaiki
Katie and Frank were headed in the same direction as me, so I offered them a lift. They were a little worse for wear from the previous night having stayed up longer than me! We drove west, heading for the coat, and made a couple of stops at lookout points when going through the mountains. At one of these points, Jame...

Drive through Buller Gorge We then made our long drive to the west coast. Following the buller river. Nothing really that interesting in this view, although the river views were pretty enough, in the land of dramatic scenery, Buller offers nothing much. The dreaded sandflies could also be found in this area. I did get bitten here. Stop at Murchi...

Having spent the day in Greymouth, we drove a little further north up the coast to Punakaiki, to go and see the geological features. Pancake rocks, as it is also known, is an unusual limestone formation. Nobody is quite sure how they were formed, but the best theory is that alternate petrified layers of hard and soft deposits of dead marine life...

It poured throughout the night again and we woke up to chilly, overcast skies. After a hot breakfast, consisting of coffee and more coffee, we headed into Motueka town to catch a hot shower at the community center, spend some time at the Internet café, get some groceries, and do some much needed laundry. After all of the errands were done we set...

Sunday morning saw us head to the Christchurch rail station to board the TraNZ-Alpine express. NZ is not a rail country like most of Europe and they only have three passenger rail lines that seem to be geared toward tourists. The TraNZ-Alpine, which cuts E-W across the waist of South Island is said to be one of the 5 great rail journeys in the w...

Dette sted er en af de kendte attraktioner i New Zealand, hvor der er en masse klippeformationer formet som en masse pandekager oven pA hinanden, heraf navnet kommer fra. Laeste pA en af infoskiltene at dette ogsA var en af de fA faenomener som forsker endnu ikke helt har gennemskuet!

In no real hurry this morning we checked out late and again stopped just up the road to see Franz Josef Glacier hardly being able to tell it apart from Fox other than the blue sky above. Continuing up the coast through small once gold mining towns we arrived at Hokitika a colourful little town where there was also a kiwi center which we decided ...

My first stop after Nelson was Kaikoura, where I'd been planning to go sea-kayaking. Unfortunately, when I got there, the sea was too rough to do anything water-based, so I went for a walk along the coast instead. It was a windswept, barren place, with seals lying by the roadside like fat, oily drunks -- in fact, all in all, it was a bit too muc...

Sunday morning brought a long drive up the coast to Punakaiki, in Paparoa National Park. Lunch in the Visitor Centre car park was more eventful than expected, with lots of playful weka birds investigating various tourists, and one taking a particular interest, and taste, in Mike's boot, which had to be quickly retrieved from outside the van. We ...

After leaving the glaciers, we backtracked a bit to go to Gillespie Beach (as recommended by Danielle) which is closer to Fox Glacier out west by the coast. It was isolated and gravelly and windy to get out there. But it was great - very remote and had the perfect weather for visiting. Grey and blustery. The entire west coast of the South Island...