No, we hadn’t heard of it either, but after reading about it in the Bushline hut, it sounded fun! It’s the northern west coast of South Island, the kind of place where “last fuel for 100km” signs are standard sights.
Cape Foulwind – actually a nice place! Captain Cook came across this area in a storm, and the name stuck. We wandered for an hour or so along the cliff tops, ducking under paragliders before finding the promised Seal Colony.
This gave us a great camping spot overlooking sea stacks for the night.
We woke up to a country mourning for their loss in the Rugby World Cup, laughed, and set off into the national park properly. Punakaiki pancake rocks, Punakaiki cavern, Pororari creek track and the Inland Pack track made a great loop walk. The National park is getting a Great Walk in December 2019, and you can see why! The sections of river track that we walked were awesome forested winding adventures. We also managed a quick scoot down the Truman track before experiencing this area’s real fame: Rain. This is the wettest part of New Zealand, with an average fo 5m of rain per year. A full on downpour sent us to the pub for a quick hideaway.
Next day dawned with a rainstorm, so we cooked breakfast. Benefits of van life. Once the rain had cleared, we set out on the Fox River Trail. The large number of warnings about flood prone river fordings on the route meant we weren’t planning a long day out, but it was still a really nice walk. Most of the path was just above, in, or completely under water. This made it quite an adventurous 3Km! Once we reached the first legitimate river crossing – thigh deep, reasonably fast flowing, ice cold water 20m wide we bravely stopped for a snack and ran away back to the van!
We also saw our first Tui! We had been looking out for one since we’d started drinking Tui Beer.
The day got so sunny on the coast, that our plan of driving into the cloudy central mountains seemed like a waste. We found another track! The Point Elizabeth Walkway started near(ish) to Greymouth and gave us a) a 2hr sunny cliff top walk b) Sea side camping.
Parenting Responsibly 