Westport -Hokitika

Trip Start Nov 04, 2007
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Trip End Dec 06, 2007


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Flag of New Zealand  ,
Monday, November 26, 2007

This morning, we went to see the seals. Yasmin asked if there was going to be poo on the ground there. Of course there will be, we said, thinking of seal poo. But we went there just last week, was the retort. Of this there can be no doubt: when Yasmin remembers something, she remembers it. Kaikoura poo on the seal walk was of the bovine variety Yasmin. These seals are different.
Indeed they were. Mckayla was awake, for one. They were also close enough for us to see them attacking each other. 'Attacking' is a nice way of saying that they were putting the moves on each other. Or to put it slightly more accurately, the males were putting the moves on the females. You can tell the males from the females because they are about three times bigger and they throw their weight around.
Punakaiki was the next stop, where we enjoyed pancakes. Limestone pancakes. Yum. There were some salt water syrup being sprayed all over them, too The pancakes begin their story
The pancakes begin their story
 . All in all, an impressive display, but as Brad would say, 'water ingression!' was an issue, and we took photos at our peril.
Greymouth was our lunch destination, but when you talk about parks, 'barren wasteland' is something Greymouth has in spades. We were lucky to find anything: certainly the park we found was lush enough and with lovely play equipment, but the number of advertised 'parks' we had to drive past before seeing it was criminal.
We quickly stopped in at Montieths' brewery only to discover it wasn't tour time for another hour, so we skipped it and headed out of town to see if Hokitika would be more welcoming.
Well, Hokitika doesn't have a brewery to speak of, but they have whitebait sandwiches, battered scallops and kumara chips. We ate like kings (kings who dine out at the local fish and chips shop). Unfortunately, Hokitika is all but closed from 6pm, so we didn't see the jade craftspeople at work.
Fortunately, Hokitika does have one shop open until late, and we looked at some of the final product of those Hokitika crafters. Can't say that the jade looks like it is really worth all the fuss, but it certainly looks nice enough (but the price?).
Finally, Hokitika Sunset Point beckoned being, as it was, close enough to sunset to make it worth a trip. 30 seconds later we were there, and wasn't it a pretty sight.
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