Hokitika, New Zealand

Just when I thought tonight I’d have to report our first ho-hum day, not a terrible day, not a boring day but a ho-hum day we pulled into the car park for the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes in the Paparoa National Park. That upped the day to another Wow day.

We started this morning with breakfast at a bakery down the street from our hotel on the beach – juice, a bacon and egg pie and a apricot and custard turnover. Then we went shopping.

Many of you know beach towns. Hampton Beach in NH comes to my mind. You have the beach, a street that parallels the beach and then souvenir shops. A restaurant and a hotel or two. In the peak season (December – March here) the place is hopping with holiday/vacation goers. But this is the shoulder season – late April, early May in NH – and so there are some tourists but it really isn’t that lively. That’s the way Hokitika seems to me.

The Tasman Sea here on the West Coast is really something else. Maybe it calms down at other times but right now it’s one continuous wave after another – big breakers. The surf roar is deafening and never let’s up. I suspect people do swim here when it’s warmer; I saw one person in a wet suit with a surf board. The beach is littered with tree stumps and even full-sized trees. We asked someone who told us trees are uprooted along rivers south of here and are blown to this beach by the prevailing northerly winds. It makes for a surreal scene, suggesting to me some alien invasion or some cataclysmic event.

But the shopping. The main event here is the green stone (i.e., jade) jewelry business for which Hotitika is known. There are a number of sources of stone in this area (generally from Maori lands) and craftspeople skilled in working the stone are found here. We first visited Wilderness Gallery, a very fine outlet for photographs of local scenes and especially wildlife by Juergen Schacke. We admired the photos but spent most of our time talking with Juergen’s wife Maria about jade jewelry. She had some fine work but fairly expensive and nothing that lit Judy’s fire. Maria said, “Don’t buy the first thing you see. The piece will find you. And be sure green jewelry is something you will really wear.” Down the street we found Traditional Jade Co., recommended by Jean and David. The owner gathers the stones and makes the jewelry on the premises. And, his prices are a whole lot less. So that’s where we made purchases for Judy and picked up some gift items too. The price tag spoke, but so did the pieces.

Then off to explore the area. The first stop was Hokitika Gorge about 30 minutes east of town. A gorge it is, reached by a fine pathway (all the parks like this we’ve visited in New Zealand are extremely well constructed and maintained). The effort was well rewarded by the views.

Then back to Hokitika and north up the coast toward Greymouth and Punakaiki, a 90-minute drive. On the way I saw a sign for a nature preserve in Greymouth. Not having the slightest idea what it was but wanting a quick hike with some bird photo ops, I made a split-second swerve off the main road decision. The preserve is a municipal walkway around a marsh and lake area. Nothing to write up for Trip Adviser, but fun nonetheless. And yes, I did snap a bird picture or two.

While at the preserve, I cracked my best line of the day, maybe of all November. There were some young workers spreading bark mulch on the side of an embankment. They, like many Kiwi’s asked, “Where are you from?” They know good and well that we’re from the USA by our accents, and they really are asking which State we hail from. I responded, “We’re from Trumpland.” “Trumpland? Where’s that,” asked one. It took a few seconds but finally one of the workers got it and started to laugh. Most of the people we’ve met today express their condolences for what they almost universally see as an unfortunate outcome. I tell them we’ll muddle through somehow and, who knows, maybe something good will come of it all. I do plan on using my line every chance I get. Might as well have some fun with it rather than taking on the gloom and sackcloth viewpoint of the locals here.

By the time we reached Punakaiki it was after 3 PM and we were a bit hungry (OK, we’d hit the trail mix and chocolate stash on the way) so we stopped at a bar in the center of the wide spot in the road called Punakaiki. Lunch service stopped at 3 so we had prepackaged steak pies with chips (Judy) and crisps (Jon). Hit the spot.

The temptation was to go to the Pancake Rocks and Blowhole attraction straightaway but we’d been told that the best viewing time is at high tide. High tide, naturally, wasn’t due until 9 PM. We didn’t want to wait that long but to stretch things out a bit we decided on a one-hour hike up a trail that follows a river bed. Like the Hokitika Gorge, this trail went through a lush, tropical-like forest with ferns, palms and all sorts of other dense foliage. A fellow we met later said it reminded him of Hawaii with the refrigerator door left open – cooler than Hawaii but similar in feel.

I did find one new bird. We found him by the grunting like call he made on the ground in dense underbrush. “Is it a Kiwi?” we wondered. No, but a ground loving, probably flightless bird of some sort. I managed to capture one picture in low light. Made me feel pretty good. But later on the same bird or his brother was waddling around the car park looking for handouts from the tourists. Big deal.

By then it was 6 PM and we started the 20-minute Pancake Rock loop. We left around 7, having stopped to snap our usual copious quantity of pictures. We’ll let the pictures speak to the beauty and power of the place. We came to the blowhole part ready to compare it to Thunder Hole on Mt. Desert Island (Bar Harbor) in Maine. But it isn’t even close. This is the real deal, blowhole wise, even on an incoming tide.

We didn’t get back to the Penthouse suite until 8:30 PM. Our hotel restaurant seems to be the only option at that late hour so Judy went down and ordered seafood chowder, mussels (not the green lipped variety) and garlic bread from room service, which was delivered as I’m typing this screed. She also opened a bottle of New Zealand Riesling we’d purchased the other day. Very nice but if my pen runs off the edge of the page as I write this, you’ll know why.