Punakaiki pancake day

We slept in this morning. That was totally unexpected and it meant that our plans of doing a short walk before lunch went out of the window. We went to breakfast. The cooking group was on pancake duty this morning.

By the time we made our lunch and had showers, it was 10:30. We decided to skip the short walk and go straight into the longer one – the Pororari River Track – which we had planned for the afternoon.

The walk follows the river for the first hour or so. The path’s flat and the scenery pretty. Most of the people from the group did this walk at some stage today, but at the time, it was only the two of us. It was serene – just the sounds of the river and some cicadas. We took our time. At one point, the riverside path took us through a very dark cave, which Andy exclaimed was highly unusual. After 90 minutes or so, the path veered right and a gentle incline was followed by non-stop ascent through a forest. I stopped still for a few minutes – only the sounds of birds around me. The fantail bird is very friendly, and quite happy to fly past you, so as to check you out. In the distance, we could hear the pretty song of the Bellbird (we saw one of these on our walk yesterday). At last the path started to go down, and after another 30 minutes, we rejoined the main road.

The little drizzle we had all morning turned into rain just as we reached Dolomite Point and the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. This is a natural sight we’d been looking forward to. The pancake stacks are impressive. We were there at high tide; this greatly improved our chances of seeing the blowholes in action. The rain did not deter us. We stayed just over an hour and we saw maybe three blowholes blowing. The waves were not big enough to see a massive display like the ones we’re used to in Cornwall. Watching the power of the waves crashing into the rocks and colliding with each other was still extremely mesmerising.

It’s only about 1km from the pancakes to the campsite and we stopped at the Punakaiki Tavern for a swift pint. The walk itself took us about three hours – which is not bad for a 10km walk and plenty of photo stops.

After dinner, everyone slowly drifted to the Punakaiki Tavern. Straight bourbon for me to try and cure my sore throat. I teamed up with Dennis (who drives our bus) and we won three out of four table football games.