Jess Wanders Off

 

This morning I got up and wandered over to the beach.  In Punakaiki and most of the northern West coast, the sea is very, VERY angry.  It makes a lovely sound as it crashes fiercely onto land.  The walls here are mostly limestone, but they have eroded to make pretty colored layers.  There’s also a lot of runoff from the cliffs.  Here, the runoff has formed a little waterfall:

 

 

This area of New Zealand was well-traversed by the Maori.  Many visiting peoples stopped because there was an abundance of wildlife to hunt and medicinal plants to gather.  They also used the coastline’s supply of flax (pictured below) as building material.

 

 

Here is some more flax, along with limestone erosion and runoff:

 

 

There are supposed to be little tiny blue penguins along this coastline during the summer months, but I didn’t see any.

After that I walked back to town (a good 40 minute walk) and went to see the famous Pancake Rocks.  Basically the only reason Punakaiki is on the tourist map is because of these rocks.  They’re so named because they look like stacks of pancakes.  They are made of limestone and are very pretty.

 

 

The best part about the Pancake Rocks is that at high tide (or close to it, which is what it was for me), the water gushes through natural “blowholes” in the rock and creates a wicked spout.  Very cool.

 

 

Here is a picture of the Pancake Rocks up close, so you can see the pancakey effect.

 

 

So after that I caught my bus down to Franz Josef, south of here.  We stopped at Hokitika, which is a nice enough little town with jade and glass galleries, then continued on toward Franz Josef.

I’m doing an 8-hour full-day tour on the glacier tomorrow (Franz Josef and its sister town Fox are known for their massive glaciers).  Supposedly we will get to see some blue ice.  I probably will be exhausted at the end of the trip so we’ll see how things go.  I hope I just don’t hold everyone up since I’m not the biggest athlete in the world.

I’ll check back later 🙂

 

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 2:12 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.