Day 5 an 6 Punakaiki to Wanaka

Another view of the Punakaiki House

DAY 5 PUNAKAIKI TO FOX GLACIER

Maureen cooked a delicious breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and roast cherry tomatoes – we wouldn't have eaten better in a restaurant. The activities of the morning included a walk along the road behind the house, which was part grey sand beach, and packing up the luggage into the van (our morning gym session). We were all sorry to leave the lovely Beach House. Another stop up at the Pancake Rocks site to visit the gift shop and get some daylight photographs, then we were on our way again. The coastal scenery was again spectacular, not much white sand, but plenty of rocks in interesting formations and wild water. There were also plenty of rivers with river flats covered in boulders, rocks, pebbles of all shapes and sizes, and as we headed inland the river beds became more and more interesting.

We lunched at Hokitika, which is a tourist town famous for the NZ Greenstone or Jade. There were greenstone factories/shops of every shape and size, and other crafts such as wood, glass blowing and photography were also featured. We also visited the antique sock knitting machine museum and shop – very interesting although none of the machines were working. The socks were beautiful, and some of us could not resist them. Others spied offcuts from the machines in a basket, and chatted the proprietor up so that she willingly gave away a bag of these brightly coloured offcuts for our textile art projects.

We said goodbye to Hokitika, just as it started to rain and continued south to Glacier country. The clouds and rain obscured any view of the glaciers which were at the tail end of our drive. The temperature was also getting quite cool, and although our night's accommodation included a spa and sauna, as oldies in a backpackers, we didn't bother to use those facilities!

Our first evening meal out, which was a lovely meal at the Fox Glacier pub - we all had a delicious dinner, although losing a  tooth filling at the end was a bit of a nuisance for Elaine.  

DAY 6 - FOX GLACIER TO WANAKA

Rain has cleared away, so we thought we might get a view of the Glacier, but no luck as the road up was closed off perhaps due to water or rock falls. We have a long-ish drive ahead, so kept going – got to get to Wanaka by 4 pm for E to visit the dentist to replace a filling which went missing during last night's dinner! The scenery is spectacular around here, as ever. We are following the coast for a little while, past Bruce Bay, and then head inland again after Haast Village where we stopped briefly for morning tea. We continued on, stopping to look at Thunder Creek Falls on the way. The autumn colours are very impressive, but these falls are in deep green rainforest.

Thunder Creek Falls