West Coast on boxing day
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
1
57
79
Trip End
Ongoing
Greymouth,
South Island,
New Zealand
Friday, December 26, 2008
Another great stop along the way to the Abel Tasman area!
We stopped for a quick half hour walk, took pictures and went to the bathroom. I will cut and paste what I googled on Punakaiki and the pancake rocks. If we were there at the right time, it would have been even better to see the blowholes, but it was still a great sight nonetheless!
The Pancake Rocks that Punakaiki is famous for, are limestone formations that began forming 30 million years ago, when lime-rich fragments of dead marine creatures were deposited on the seabed, then overlaid by weaker layers of soft mud and clay.
The seabed was raised above sealevel by earthquakes to form the coastal cliffs and coastline. The sea, wind and rain have since etched out the soft layers to form the unusual rock formations we see today.
When conditions are right, heavy ocean swells thunder into the caverns beneath the rocks and huge water spouts blast skywards through the blowholes in a truly spectacular sight.
