PANCAKES AND SCONES

Punakaiki is wild and wonderful. Lush green rainforests and exotic nikau palms tumble right down to the seashore along this stunning, unkempt Western coastline. Everyday, hundreds of tourists on the way from somewhere to elsewhere get off buses at Punakaiki and stay for just twenty minutes to have a quick dash around natures playground at Pancake Rocks and its blowholes.

Pancake Rocks are a result of a layering and weathering process where the rocks have formed what resemble huge stacks of pancakes. The sea surges into a labyrinth of caverns under the headland and high tide is whoopee time. The first performer is The Chimney Pot which is a narrow cleft in the rock from which water shoots into the sky, soaking unsuspecting folk standing downwind with a fine, cold spray. Just around the corner, you’ll find people peering down into Pukai – a deep chasm into which huge waves roll then bounce off the back wall with a loud boom and spectacular splash, the sunlight making rainbows in the spray. Next is The Surge Pool which is like a giant cauldron of foam, rising and falling with every wave as if it was about to boil over but my favourite was Sudden Sound. This gem is a vertical shaft set back from the tip of the headland, hidden by surrounding vegetation. Without warning Sudden Sound belches forward a deafening roar as air in the cavern below is forced up the shaft by a wave crashing in. It was great fun to stand there, hiding the sign on the fence and seeing people’s reactions when it blew as they walked past! The whole place was just one big show and we spent three hours there having such a good time that we went back for another three the next day.

Karamea is literally at the end of the road. The ruggedness of the coastline and mountains to the North made continuing the road an engineering impossibility years ago and today the Department of Conservation takes a ‘when hell freezes over” stance to completing the coastal circuit. We were fortunate to get a lift up to Karamea from Yvonne who worked at the hostel at Punakaiki. On the way up, she took us to see a seal colony at Cape Foulwind (James Cook and a ferocious storm). From our lookout on the cliff we could see dozens of fur seals basking on the rocks just below us. In a small sheltered rock-pool we watched ten seal pups at play - flapping about, dragging a big piece of seaweed behind them and rolling around with each other. It was delightful.

Yvonne was keen to share some local history with us and took us up to an exposed mountain top to Denniston where there used to be a thriving coal mining community. In its heyday, newly married brides came to live up here and didn’t come down for another thirty years and I don’t blame them either as the only mode of transport at the time would have been an empty coal bin on the steep and notoriously perilous cable railway. These bins broke loose from time to time and would flatten anyone and anything in their way in a cloud of sparks and smoke as they hurtled towards the bottom. Today all that remains of the shops, school, places of worship, homes and pithead buildings are a few bits of track, some coal bins here and there, a few ramshackle sheds and small nuggets of shiny black coal that crunch underfoot, along with the most amazing view of miles and miles of coastline.

And so we arrived at Karamea which was like another world – well I’m sure that the volunteers at the stripey Rongo Backpackers were in another world given the way they drifted about the place with flowers in their hair. The hostel has an extensive and well tended organic fruit and vegetable garden where guests are welcome to help themselves to whatever they want. A pirate radio station broadcasts a wacky array of music from a shed in the garden and anyone who fancies themselves as a bit of a DJ is invited to host a radio show with tunes and banter of their choice. We didn’t broadcast over the airwaves, but some Tom Jones was played in honour of our presence.

There was a ruffle of excitement among the ‘Rongolians’ one afternoon (it takes a lot to stir these people) when someone was despatched on a bike to the village shop to buy flour and eggs for a ‘Scone Off’. Every couple of weeks about six of them disappear into the kitchen and appear an hour later with plates of hot scones and big pots of tea and guests are invited to help demolish the lot. I was a bit wary of the cheese and ‘herb’ scones but there were no after-effects to report – well none that I can recall anyway. We took some lovely walks around the village (apart from the one where we’d taken one of Marc’s diversions and ended up crawling under an electric fence), we ambled along the beach and up the river estuary where we did a bit of twitching and played boules in the sand as we waited for sunset.

We left Karamea on the post-bus on which we enjoyed a lively and fascinating narrative the whole way from our lady postie. She was a mine of information on everything from how each of the creeks we crossed got its name to the agricultural practice of ‘humping and hollowing’ – the method of land improvement by ploughing wet fields into ‘waves’. She told us the history behind the Taffytown road sign that was out in the middle of nowhere on the Karamea Bluff. This marks the area that was once home to a band of Welshmen who constructed the winding road over the bluff with picks and shovels. They lived here in a community of semi-permanent tents for the two years it took to complete the task. The settlement has long gone but the area still bears the name.

We arrived in Westport when it was dark, cold and raining and left early next morning when it was dark, cold and raining, so I have no idea what its like when it’s not. The trip back to Christchurch over The Lewis Pass was grey and misty but through steamed-up windows we could see waterfalls dropping down into the valleys below from mountains with their peaks in the clouds which felt very moody and atmospheric.

And so our loop of the dramatic West coast of South Island was over. We had been blessed with fabulous weather for the most part and were lucky enough to have had the time to spend a few days getting to know places not on the tourist ‘A List’. We had become familiar faces in a couple of craft and coffee shops and by the end had even qualified for a supermarket loyalty card!