Barry and Jodie's Kiwi Adventure

"A South Island Adventure" 

Gold and Okarito  Back  Next  Home

The pattern of our trip had become early rising, departure on the bus, drive a good part of the day, reach a destination, do something active, move on. Since our 2-day layover in Queenstown after Mt. Cook, we hadn’t stayed more than one night anywhere. But after our rainy tramp we pushed on by bus to the coastal town of Okarito and settled down for a two-day stay. As we dried out in clearing weather, Nic prepared a lovely hot meal, we ran the motel’s dryer overtime, and passed around a bottle of Irish whiskey to warm us from the inside.

Nicola was the chef for most of our meals. They were served family style, and featured plain but hearty dishes heavy on carbos and fresh veggies. They were great. We also learned from the first day that the group was encouraged to buy beer, wine, etc. to enjoy with meals. This group needed no goading. We reckoned in Okarito that we’d not had one evening meal since starting that hadn’t been well lubricated with fine NZ wines and beers.

We retired with hope as the clearing skies had given us our first glimpse of the Southern Cross in a sky blazing with stars. And awoke again to leaden skies, punishing winds, and a very early dash down the road to the outfitters to get our sea kayaks for a day of exploring around Okarito Lagoon. The area is full of sea birds, and on the far shore we found river inlets where the trees closed in and we could hear and see a feast of native birds like the fantail, the tui, the bellbird and others. Once we were able to get out of the open water of the lagoon and into the rivers, it was a peaceful, easy journey. Jodie and I lingered in the reaches watching birds and listening to their unusual and melodic calls. The tui bird alone has more than 20 calls. It famously mimics the bell-like call of the bellbird. If you can’t see which it is it’s hard to sort them out. Either way the call is lovely and exotic. To hear the tui's call, left click on the Tui bird's picture.

 Jodie especially enjoyed the fantails. They were willing to come right down to the edges of the river in the trees and flitted about showing how they got their name, with large tail feather arrays they opened and closed like tiny, grey peacocks. They’re insect catchers and their tails give them great flying agility to swoop and veer. We simply enjoyed the show as they mobbed about the banks. Our lingering came with a price. As we emerged from the forest into the Lagoon again a squall spun up and we were once again battling wind and hard-driven rain as we dashed for the channel in the shallow Lagoon and made for shelter in another cove down the coast.

Gold was discovered on NZ’s west coast in the 1870’s. The country was promptly invaded by a swarm of fortune hunters. Many were on a circuit that had included the California gold rush decades earlier. Okarito was one of the small settlements that sprang up as a result. The land was so valuable that the sections available to settlers were very narrow. They remain so to this day, though the town is now a small and out of the way place. Most of the homes are built to accommodate the small narrow lots. Many looked much like single wide mobile homes that had been dropped lengthwise onto the plots.

After lunch Jodie and I set off on some independent tramping. We first climbed to the “Trig,” a survey point high above the coastal town, and the geography of the town is easy to comprehend from this height. We went on to follow a ridgeline parallel to the coastline heading south from town to Three Mile Lagoon. From there we were able to descend to the beach itself and walk along the coast to town. We should have checked the tide tables at the start of the walk, but didn’t. So when we descended to the beach we realized we weren’t sure whether the tide was low or rising. After some nervous minutes where we fairly raced along, we reasoned out it was low tide and had a more relaxed walk along a stony beach full of boulders, sea birds and a limitless horizon across the Tasman Sea as the remaining clouds retreated.

Pancake Rocks

We continued up the coast from Okarito, enjoying spectacular views that reminded us of US 1 south of San Francisco. We reached Punakaiki in the early afternoon. This area of the coast is fractured by earthquakes and tectonic pressure. The cliffs come straight down to narrow sandy beaches and surfers swarm. The town is the main entry to another national park, Paparoa. It also features a collection of bizarre rock formations on the coast. Dubbed “pancake rocks” for obvious reasons, these have so far defied a definitive explanation by geologists. It’s also the entry to a series of tramps along the Punakaiki and Pororari Rivers. One of our rare dry tramps, it was a lovely ramble through tall forests and scenic river gorges, heading up one valley then cutting through the bush to connect with the other to return to the coast.

This marked the end of our coastal trip. We celebrated by eating fish and chips at a pub in my personal favorite NZ burg, Barrytown.

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