After a lovely four night stop in Abel Tasman, we embarked on a 3.5 hour trip down the west coast along state highway 6, all the way to Punakaiki. Having passed a sign along the way reading ‘no fuel for 90km’, it really felt like we were a long way from civilisation. When we reached our destination, the feeling was much the same!
At times, I actually felt like we were driving around Jurassic Park, with the rocky cliffs covered in a variety of vegetation.
Punakaiki is home to the very unique Pancake Rocks and is also the entrance to Paparoa National Park where you will find some unreal scenic views made up of bush and rivers. It’s therefore very popular with tourists, with the only signs of civilisation in the area being establishments to serve this tourism.
A few accommodation options (including the holiday park where we stayed), a pub and then a cafe and information centre up by the Pancake Rocks entrance.
Admittedly, we were a little unprepared for this. The nearest proper shops were a good 40 minutes away in the town of Greymouth, so we were forced to buy a bottle of water from the nearby cafe and some pasta and pasta sauce from the couple of shelves of products at our holiday park’s reception. These three basic items set us back some 13 bucks! About $8 more than what we’d pay at a supermarket. Ah well… we live and learn!
Our sole reason for stopping in the area was to have a gander at the pancake rocks. They were very impressive and very different from anything else I’d seen before. Obviously, they take their name due to their appearance, as millions of years of effort by the Tasman Sea has seen them form countless ridges, resembling a stack of pancakes.
There are also blowholes, but we caught them at the wrong time of day unfortunately so didn’t see them at their full force.
The way some of the rocks and coastline had been formed was really quite unbelievable. There was one huge rectangular hole with the sea crashing around underneath it; it almost looked like an aqua stadium or something due to the shape and the way everyone peered down into it from the edges.
There is also another iconic rock formation, which is supposedly made up of faces, tiger heads, a fish, a weird octopus thing and much more.
The head on the left is the only really obvious one I think. Most of the rest are desperately clutching at straws!
Anyway, the rocks are definitely worth a visit due to their uniqueness. The river tracks into the national park nearby also looked very scenic, but we only had half a day.
On another note, our holiday park was right next to the beach which was nice and being right on the west coast, it served up a pretty awesome sunset!
The holiday park was actually very nice, but it’s remoteness was shown up as the taps were accompanied with signs warning that all drinking water must be boiled first! The park also seemed to be very popular with another species – sandflies! So we both left with about 50 fresh bites all over our legs, which I can tell you, is fucking annoying!!
After our brief stop in Punakaiki, we had a short 40 minute drive to Greymouth where we would be catching the scenic TranzAlpine train over to Christchurch on the east coast. This also means that Tommy the campervan will finally get a couple of days rest after clocking up over 4500km so far since we started travelling!