Pancake Rocks Beach, South Island, New Zealand Photo by Barry Epstein
Sunset near Punakaiki, South Island, New Zealand Photo by Barry Epstein
Sunset near Punakaiki 2, South Island, New Zealand Photo by Barry Epstein dramatically on this side of the pass to a more intense rainforest as we continued driving towards the west coast destination of Punakaiki. Across from the Punakaiki information centre is the well marked and maintained trail for the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes located in the Paparoa National Park. This hike was very short and the views were great. There are many other hiking trails and we took a couple of short walks that traversed the river and one that went to the beach. One of the things that we missed on this trip was a drive about 2 hours North to Westport that was touted in one of the brochures as being rated as the top coastal drives in the world!
The next day we drove South back through Greymouth and hugged the coast of the Tasman Sea towards the town of Franz Josef. More winding roads through beautiful rain forests for about 3.5 hours until we arrived in a quaint town geared for mountain and glacier adventures. The weather was favorably sunny and warm. My oldest son Luke went heli-hiking on the glacier located in the Westland National Park, which he said was magnificent but difficult as walking with the crampons was tough. The rest of us went for an easy 45 minute hike to the base of the glacier where two splendid waterfalls were seen literally on the trail that were easy to photograph. You can only get a glimpse of the glacier at this point but the only interesting view is of the top.
Another short and very easy 10 minute hike we took was to Peter ' s Pool that offers great mountain reflections. Luke decided to take a very difficult vertical trail for about 3 hours
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