NZ Roadtrip: Greymouth to Nelson

After our 2 week WorkAway stint, it was time for Mac & I to continue on our NZ Road Trip. We made our way from Greymouth to Nelson and stopped at quite a few places along the way!

Pancake Rocks | Punakaiki

Just a quick 45 minute drive from Greymouth is a small town called Punakaiki. The town is right on the coast and its claim to fame is a geological marvel – the Pancake Rocks. They were so cool & unique and I can’t eloquently put into words about their formation & other geological information, so I’m going to let the Department of Conservation explain this one for me:

They were formed 30 million years ago from minute fragments of dead marine creatures and plants landed on the seabed about 2 km below the surface. Immense water pressure caused the fragments to solidify in hard and soft layers. Gradually seismic action lifted the limestone above the seabed. Mildly acidic rain, wind and seawater sculpted the bizarre shapes.

From what we had read about the Pancake Rocks, high tide was the best time to go. Unfortunately for us, the day that we were there high tide was 5pm – aka basically night time (#winterproblems), so we made due with our 3pm arrival time instead. There is a nice 20 minute loop track that takes you along the coastal cliff edge to see some pretty great views of the Pancake Rocks.

The reason for the high tide visit is to catch the giant blowhole in action. This one was bigger than the one we saw in the Catlins, and I can only imagine how fierce the water gets when it rushes through at high tide!

What started out as a fairly nice day soon turned cloudy & drizzly. We quickly admired the remaining views as we cinched our hoods a little tighter and made our way back to the car. Despite missing the full on action of the waves, I really enjoyed seeing the Pancake Rocks.

Westport

Our first overnight stop after leaving Greymouth was to a coastal town called Westport. Though I can’t say much about the town (we didn’t venture downtown as we made dinner in our hostel and then left early the next morning), the river head provided some mild entertainment while we still had a few daylight hours! Not unlike the riverhead in Greymouth, the Buller River runs through town and meets the Tasman Sea with breakwalls on either side. The waters were fairly calm when we were there, but there were a few brave souls surfing! How they managed to cope with what I can assume to be extremely frigid waters, I’ll never know!!

We admired the waves and what was originally a fairly decent sunset before the clouds rolled in and the rain declared it was time to go.

Tasman Bay Area

The best part of the drive from Westport towards Richmond/Nelson was the SUN!! The skies had FINALLY cleared up and driving in the warm car with the sunshine on our faces was pure bliss. This area of the country isn’t in full ‘winter mode’ yet, so we saw some pretty amazingly coloured trees on the highway!

Upon leaving Westport we attempted to sort out our plans for the following days. Given the sudden change in weather we knew we wanted to take advantage, so it was decided that we’d hike the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk! We stopped briefly in Richmond to get stocked up on groceries, and then made another quick stop in Nelson to book our campsites & water taxi. We camped at a cool place (McKee Memorial Domain) on Ruby Bay for the evening.

Though the day had been nice, the evening forecast didn’t look too promising. This was further enforced when we got a good look across the bay at some incoming fierce-looking rain clouds! I got right to work preparing & packaging up all of our food for the hike and finished just before the rain came down! It rained for about 2 hours and then we were treated to a gorgeous night sky.

The next morning we drove towards Marahau where we’d set off on a 4-day, 54km hike! Spoiler alert: it. was. AWESOME!!!