Hey everyone! Lauren here to tell you about our time looking at "pancakes" in the Paparoa National Park and at Cape Foulwind! Both of these places are on the beautiful west coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
Punakaiki Pancakes
We had a bit of a late start as I "accidentally" slept in until 10am despite Gerrod attempting to wake me up at 8am. I'm sure he didn't mind two hours of Nintendo Switch time though. After getting ready, we headed out to the Punakaiki Pancakes!
The pancake rocks are located in Paparoa National Park, which was about a 20-30 minute drive south of our accommodation, Charleston Holiday Park. On the drive to the pancakes we stopped at the Itimahuwhero Viewpoint to snap some pics and enjoy the beautiful view of the coast. After finally arriving, we took a quick look around the park visitor's center which is located across the street from the pancake rocks.
The walking path is very short and paved, making access super easy, so we were quickly looking at the pancakes. The rock pancakes were less delicious than the usual eating variety, but the limestone rock stacks were visually amazing! It looked like someone had stacked tons of smooth flat rocks in weird piles near the ocean. Gerrod kept bringing up weird conspiracy theories that ancient people did build up the rocks by hand to confuse future generations.
There were supposed to be blowholes among the pancake rocks, but of course we were there during low tide and the blowholes are only really active at high tide. Despite our bad timing, we enjoyed the easy walk through the pancake rocks.
Punakaiki Cavern
After grabbing some lunch at a cafe across the street from the pancake rocks, we decided to explore Punakaiki Cavern, which was just a short 5 minute walk down the street from the carpark.
Gerrod and I made sure to pack our flashlight and headlamp in the morning, but of course I forgot to put batteries in the headlamp so we were stuck with only one flashlight. Thanks to modern technology, we did have the use of a handy cell phone flashlight.
It seemed that there were many different paths that you could take in the cave....if you had proper equipment like a functioning headlamp. Despite our poor planning, we spent some time poking around the parts of the cave we could.
Cape Foulwind
After our quick cave adventure, we headed back north to see the New Zealand fur seal colony at Cape Foulwind. We parked at Tauranga Bay, which is located at the southern end of the Cape Foulwind walking trail. The walk to the viewing platform was super easy, and we saw some weka, which is a pretty cool native New Zealand bird! There were also some informational signs about seals and stuff along the trail.
At the view point, we could see several seals below us swimming in the water, and there was a telescope thing that you could use to see the seals up close. I loved seeing the seals swimming in the water, and think it is fun to just watch them napping on the rocks below.
From the seal colony, there is a longer walking track that leads to the Cape Foulwind lighthouse, but Gerrod and I opted to head back to our car since we needed to go grocery shopping, which was even further north in the town of Westport.
After doing our grocery shopping, we headed back to our accommodation to cook a delicious dinner of chicken, corn on the cob, and yummy potatoes and share a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc.
Until next time!
Lauren (and Gerrod)
