West Coast Trip Part 1

After we collected our bags and got our rental car, we decided the prediction of heavy rain was not correct and that we would head north to Punakaiki. Andrew and Stephen went all the way around the rocks, Rachel and I only did part of the walk as we had to go back for a toilet stop. Below are a selection of photos.

It was here that Andrew decided that if the rocks were pancakes then the sea was the milk.

We stayed in Hokitika at a holiday home through Stephen's work. We did discover that if you want to eat out you have to book - especially on the weekend. On Saturday night we tried three places before we found somewhere.

On Sunday we went to Shantytown. I like this photo, although blurry, because when Andrew was counting how many people you could sleep in this Chinese miners hut, he said there was room for six people and a cat who could sleep where he was sitting.

The highlight for Andrew and possibly Rachel was riding on the steam train. Rachel decided on the weekend, that she likes trains too.

Stephen and the kids got to pan for gold. Unlike when we did it up the Kawarau gorge, here it is guaranteed that you would find gold.

Here we are at church. We walked into church at 1:30pm which is when we are presently having church (while our building is repaired). Today at church we said "we were in church last Sunday afternoon, unfortunately no one joined us."

On the way back to Hokitika we stopped to have a look at this old bridge. When they replaced the road/rail bridge at Arahura with the road and rail on separate parts of the bridge, they moved part of the old bridge to form a historical site. Here is Andrew underneath the bridge. Rachel was asleep in the car at this point.

We went down to the beach in Hokitika where from this photo it looks like we found some sun but it was just peeking through the cloud at the right point. We were quite fortunate with the weather because although there had been heavy rain forecast for most of the weekend it didn't rain when we were wanting to go exploring.