Pancake Rocks

It fair wellied it down overnight and the roof reverberating meant we didn't get a great deal of sleep, but the good news is that as we headed north up the west coast, the rain lessened and there were some glimmers of blue sky, yahey! We passed through Whataroa and the wonderfully named Hari Hari (yes I was singing Hare Krishna for some miles afterwards), through lots of scenic reserves with Dr Seuss trees, beside enormous rivers and in to steamy rainforest. We stopped for a cuppa in Hokitika at Stumpers Cafe Bar to catch up on Internet stuff, thank you for all the birthday wishes yesterday, but it was still raining so we kept going. The creek names are less imaginative here West Coast folks, you need to do better! Nevertheless I noted: Red Jack's Creek; Horseshoe Bend Creek; Woolhouse Creek; Flowery Creek and Whitehorse Creek. In Greymouth we stopped for shopping and fuel and then the scenery changed to coastal with dramatic jagged rocks out to sea and the promise of penguins for a while, but not to be. Finally, a proper stop at Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks and the blowholes. The best time to see these is when it's high tide and rough seas because then the waves shoot up through all the blowholes (of which there are many!) and make a terrific show and racket. We were between tides but we still got terrific booms as large waves went through the system. No one seems to know why these rocks are layered as they are but they are quite amazing. You can see from my blip that the blue sky was pushing out the wet weather and so we had the best conditions here. Another cuppa in the cafe and fun watching the seagulls fly in and clean up the plates left by the folks on the next table, then we were back on the road again.
We did a circular tour of Cape Foulwind and walked out to the seal colony where we were rewarded with lots of seals and also Weka birds, another flightless NZ bird and very cute. For a minute there we thought we spotted blue Penguins in the surf but.....they were surfers, should have gone to Specsavers!
So now we are very comfortably parked up at Carter's Beach Holiday Park, thank you to the lovely welcoming Barb who wasn't at all concerned that we hadn't booked, with the sound of the surf in the background and the promise of a sunset over the Tasman Sea.