West Coast & The Pancake Rocks

We drove from Fox Glacier to Punakaiki and back to Fox Glacier, a total of about 500km for the day as you can see in the blue and green on the map below.

Highlights of this days trip included:

• This trip was not planned but when we saw that two days in Fox Glacier was way to much time, we determined to drive to the "Pancake Rocks" and back.
• We went along the coast to Franz Josef Glacier where it was a little overcast so we drove on hoping to catch Franz Josef on the return ride.
• We went through Graymouth and saw the LDS Church there.  Between Westport and Graymouth, you have the two largest towns on the west coast of the south island.
• We then drove 44km further north to the Pancake Rocks.  It was amazing!  You'll see from the pictures below how unique it is!  We got there at about 11am which was the worst time on the clock to be there, low tide.  It was still amazing...next time we'll come at high tide to catch the blow hole action.
• We drove back down the coast towards Fox Glacier and stoped in Hokitika to lunch and see the "National Kiwi Center".  Now, the cost to see this center was $15.50 per, there were only two kiwis, a couple lizards and some eels.  No one was there either.  Did we miss something..."National Kiwi Center"?????
• We then drove back to Franz Josef and walked the 3km up to the face of the glacier.  Amazing!  All the glacier pictures are with the previous posting.
• We then returned to Fox Glacier and went out to Lake Matheson to see the "Mirror Lake" but the wind was blowing.  Got some good photos, but not much reflection!  These pictures are also in the previous post.

Heres a sample of the coast line driving up to Graymouth.

Here's a sample of the homes along with the mountain backdrop that was all along the coast.

Here we are at the Pancake Rocks!

Here's some of the scenery we saw as we drove up and down the west coast.

We thought that it might interest some to see what a sample of the homes we passed looked like so here they are.

Here's a sample of the photos we took at the Pancake Rocks.