Thursday 17 June 2010

Hokitika gorge

02.02.2010

Plan for the day in Hokitika, was to round Lake Kaniere, as I was told that would be a nice thing to do for an easy day. But then the campsite owner told me it'd be way better to go out to Hokitika Gorge (would be gorgeous she told me :) )... well then :)


Now that was well worth it :) Just a pity that I realized when I took this pic, that the SD card for my cam is still 30km away on the campsite *d'oh*




Punakaiki - Hokitika

01.02.2010

On the 1st of Feb I finally moved out of Punakaiki and followed the west coast road to Hokitika

lovely road along the seaside...


...with lots of little hills to keep it interesting and keep the legs busy :)


1st view of the mountains *jiippiiiee*, this is what I'm heading to :)


...but at the moment it only seems so near thanks to the good zoom of my cam... ;)



during a long, straight, even (there for booooooring) stretch of road, things like that are more then welcome


after I pitched my tent on a recommended campsite in Hokitika, I headed for the town itself and its beach and found that standing round. *hmmmm tattoo....* ;)


the whole town seems to meet down by the beach




remains from the driftwood festival that took place last few weeks. Missed it by few days I found out :(



cloudy Punakaiki

22.01.2010

I think that was the only day without sun in "typical" west coast weather ;)


Punakaiki Beach; even beautiful on a cloudy / rainy day



on the walk along the Pororari river





22.01.2010

Westport - Punakaiki

20.01.2010


The weather forecast said it would rain and as I quite liked the location of Carter Beach I decided to just sleep in and decide spontaneously if I move on to Punakaiki or stay for a 2nd night here on the campsite.

It started to rain a bit in the morning, but then stopped again round 11. I took that as a sign to move on and was on the bike at 12 to go for only 50kms to the Beach Hostel that several people already recommended during my time in the Golden Bay.

Was a lovely bit of road, mostly directly next to the sea, if only the shifting between my gears was working properly....

Without the low gears working (just couldn't shift into them...) all those little hills got more and more challenging.


Just lovely to get to a beach like this directly besides the road with 70km/h :)


this is what I expected the west coast to look like






had to wait for quite some time till one of the seagulls around, was so nice to be at least close to the spot I wanted it to be in for the photo