Blow Me!

Blow Me!
Punakaiki, New Zealand

Punakaiki, New Zealand

Leaving Franz Josef the grey clouds rolled in and the rain that had been looming on our weather apps descended. We didn’t really have too much of a plan for the rest of our time in NZ and the ever looming prospect of selling Blondini was hovering over us. With three days of torrential rain forecast and nowhere to run and hide we decided to slow down our pace and just take some time out on the west coast. We had a brief overnight stay in Hokitika, where it rained. We then headed along the coast to Greymouth where it rained some more. We even went to the location of our final big thing in NZ, the big sandfly and it was raining so much that they had put the sandfly away and required a significant amount of pleading and evidence that we had taken our photo with every other big thing in NZ for them to roll it out for us. We hauled up at a campsite in Greymouth and made the executive decision to list Blondini on Trade Me. We had spent a huge amount of time taking her photos a week or so earlier and had drafted an advert that made her irresistible and we just had to wait it out to see if we would get any interest. Unbelievably within an hour of her going online we had messages from all over NZ which was a massive relief. We knew that she was an awesome van but finding a buyer when winter is arriving was always a massive fear, we hoped that like in OZ because we had bought a higher quality van than the usual backpacker heap that we would sell her to the a local and not another backpacker s and we were right that morning just 12 hours after we listed her we had a text and a voice message from John who just happened to be driving from Nelson to Hokitika that morning and would like to see her. When the rain stopped we gave her a quick wash to have her looking her best and we waited. Bang on noon John and Kaye arrived had a look around our girl and within minutes offered a price and shook hands. OMG that was almost a bit too quick!! Just like with our beloved La Toya the first person to look at Blondini bought her, either we are really lucky or we should open up a used car yard as we are getting a bit good at this, ha ha. With a deposit paid and a plan to deliver Blondini to Nelson in a few days we had some planning to do, now we had 3 weeks in NZ with no van and no transport and we had to get back to Auckland for our flight to Tahiti.

As we were still in gold territory and my plans to go to the public panning fields in Ross were washed out due to the rain, we made our way to Shanty Town. A theme village with gold panning, a steam train and an opportunity to dress up as 18^th century bar tenders for the afternoon. Despite floods and rain trying to stop us getting there we made it and had a great time enjoying the entire place pretty much to ourselves. Our photoshoot was somewhat less enjoyable that it could have been as the girl running it was terrible. She just showed us to the fancy dress room and left us to it, which was fine, but then she proceeded to take the worst set of photos I have ever seen, the first batch made me look like I had a leg missing and she had the cheek to roll her eyes and sigh when we asked her to try again. I think someone might be due a career change! Eventually we managed to get a fairly good shot and as we could only justify buying one shot we opted for the angry ‘would you drink here’ shot as the usually happy laughing one was a bit too normal and sadly we had to leave behind my one leg shot!!

Our final stop on the West coast was a destination that pretty much every single Kiwi told us that we had to visit. Punakaiki or Pancake rocks, this spectacle created by mother nature is just something else, we had pretty low expectations as we have seen a lot of rocks on our travels but Punakaiki just blew us away.

The one thing that did surprise us arriving at Punakaiki was the car park filled to bursting point with cars, campers and buses, including the dreaded Kiwi Experience bus. There was a café, a gift shop and even huge signs pointing the way to the rocks. I genuinely expected this to be much like some of the other places we had stopped like the Haast Blue Pools, where if you didn’t know to stop you would just drive past. There was no chance of anyone accidentally sneaking past Punakaiki and they would definitely regret it if they did.

These strange rock formations are layered like pancakes and are like nothing we have ever seen. Through the rocks the ocean has carved out massive craters which at high tide create some pretty spectacular blow holes. Whilst we visited a few hours before high tide, for a change the terrible weather was working in our favour and every blow hole was putting on a display for us. From the chimney which looks like it is smoking to the massive blow holes which sprayed water, to the ones that just made a huge crazy noise like a dragon snoring, this was one amazing place and a perfect last destination to visit on our journey with Blondini.

Our final journey up to Nelson took us through the Buller Gorge, which was somewhat terrifying as it had been closed in sections in the previous days due to landslides and rock falls hitting cars and campers. Thankfully we made it safe and well and without incident.

Onwards to our last stop delivering Blondini to her new home….. Nelson!