New Zealand - Day 2

Travelled 398 kms

We slept really well considering the mattress and awoke about nine. We missed the sunrise, not because of our inability to get out of bed, No; the mountains were shrouded in a heavy blanket of cloud. After showering in the spotlessly clean shower building and coffee we had a walk around the site.

It was mainly for the chalet trade, but there is about a dozen powered pitches and the same amount for tents. There is a small area for non-powered pitches.

We had to go the local i site. These are dotted throughout NZ and are an invaluable source of information, both local, and national. This is the place where travellers should seek out every time they arrive in a new city or indeed rural area.

I had read about the thermal springs here and decided to find out more. This it turns out to be an excellent place to start the trip. There are twelve thermal pools, where the temperatures range from 33 - 42° Celsius. There’s a swimming pool restaurant and a complete personal pampering and relaxation regime. A very good restaurant and massage area completes the deal. You can opt for any or all of the therapies we just went for the bog standard but relaxing thermal pool experience.

This cost $14 or about £6 for an all day ticket. We only managed two hours because it was a very hot morning rising to 32° later in the day. It really was a nice time and we came out spotless with a slight aroma of Sulphur clinging to our nostrils. www.hamnersprings.co.nz

The coal-mining town of Westport was to be our next stop. It is on the west coast and was reached by crossing the Spenser Mountains.

All along the roads but not as frequent as in Oz, are picnic areas and rest areas for drivers. We pulled in at one to make some lunch. This is were campervans are invaluable. You can save a small fortune preparing your own food, although this is not what a holiday is about. We were parked up beside a river, and in the tail end of nowhere. Three other vans had had the same idea. Lunch of filled rolls and coffee was really dead on. Another thing we learnt, and I’ll mention all the handy hints as we go along, is you don’t use your facilities if there are other similar ones beside you. This even or maybe especially means toilet facilities. Way out where there’s no easily accessible mains water, kiwis dig a very deep hole in the ground and put a single toilet cubicle over it. This works. Doesn’t sound palatable but you don’t know what goes on deep below your own bog. These deep and wide chasms are a Technicolor reality of all our lives. Please don’t put your rubbish in though.

Ever onwards. Time is marching on, both right now while I write this and when the events were rolling out in front of us.

It was really warm, the aircon was just about keeping us cool and the miles were being eaten up at a steady rate.

We were passing through a small town called Reefton. It looked very friendly so we stopped for a poke. Two lovely ice creams later we were walking along the main street being greeted warmly by one and all. I’m reporting on the ice cream because the only pub in the town was closed for the afternoon period.

This might sound a bit olden times and not in keeping with the fact that this is the very first town in NZ to have electricity. It was also in this town that we saw the two biggest cockroaches we both have ever seen.

Onwards not paying a lot of attention to anything other that the wonderful scenery when we saw a sign for Pancake Rocks and Blowhole.

The funny side of this is it could be a place to get soft drugs and eat pastry products if you got the munchies!

The reality is, in Jane Dunn’s book Motorhome Magic described how they came across this spectacle on their trip. The sea and elements have eroded the rocks and they have cracked leaving them looking like giant stacks of grey crepes piled high on top of each other.
The sea has created a tunnel or cave, which created a blowhole about fifty metres inland. What happens is, a huge wave rolling in from the Pacific crashes up into the cave and some of it gets blown up through a big hole in the ground maybe about b6six metres wide. It makes a deep guttural boom underground and this is blown up through along with the water. We had a very pleasant time here, in this stunning attraction even as the sun roasted any exposed flesh.
Back behind the wheel and our journey was taking us past some beautiful and deserted beaches. Had to stop and stroll, you know our wee strolls that might last over an hour! Took some pictures and ooh and aahed at the scenery.

The trouble with NZ is it’s so hard to pass some of the gorgeous things you see along your way. If we could only learn to do this, our trip might last a lot less time. But, what are we here for anyway? If it takes too long we can make up time somewhere else. Either that or come back again. It’s only down the road!

Here we topped up the fuel tank with forty-seven bucks worth of diesel. Kiwis don’t normally use the word bucks, and fair play to them. After all it’s something else crawled out of the US!
I really wanted to wild camp, but being inexperienced didn’t know where to look. We passed a spot with about five vans on it just near the road. Unfortunately this was one of the narrow roads with no turning space for miles so decided just to carry on. There would be another chance on up the road a bit, we thought in our sadly misplaced wisdom. We gave up on finding somewhere because the tired irritability was creeping in to both of us. Time for plan B.

We asked Tom-tom to find us a site and this he did. It was about twelve clicks away in the town of Hokitika. This was a site baring the same name and it was tired. February is when the schools are all back for the start of the new year, so the holiday parks would have been full to overflowing for the busiest time of their year.

This place was a full of youngsters with surfboards on the top of their vans and adventure and thrill seeking in their heads.

A disaster was looming. I’d noticed the battery on my video was low, and I’d brought the wrong charger. There just had to be enough for the flight tomorrow, in the meantime I tried to find a place to get a new lead, but in a small town like this………..

Parked up for the night I cooked the evening meal, but can’t remember what it was. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a fry up though. No flippin Soda Bread nor potato bread either. A couple of beers and some wine later fell into bed.

We’d travelled two kilometres short of four hundred and it was time to sleep it off.