Hokitika

Hokitika is a seaside town famous for its artists, wood sculptors, jade carvers, glass blowers, stone painters and wool shearers.

It's a good place for shopping around and I bought a lot of souvenirs there including some glass sculptures. The crafters are working in front of you, creating beautiful vases and other glass objects.

Don't miss the beautiful sunsets over the Tasman Sea.

Punakaiki

Living Hokitika, I followed the famous 'Coast Road' to Punakaiki. This road is the most beautiful one in New Zealand and follows the ancient Greenstone Trails, used by Maori for centuries in search of jade (Pounamu).

Punakaiki is the home of the spectacular Pancake Rocks. These rock formations look like pancakes because of the regular horizontal layers. The geologist advanced a few theories on how those layers formed. During the undersea formation of these limestone rocks, some sort of anomaly caused them to be softer/denser in layers so that when weathered by waves and wind they start to look like pancakes.

In addition, there are sea caves and a few of 15m or 20m deep chimney pots carved by the Tasman Sea waves. With each wave, sea sprays blast out of those pancake rocks' blowholes!

This place is typical of the West Coast's Paparoa National Park: spectacular and profound landscape, rugged cliffs, impressive seas, huge waves, tropical rain forests... beautiful and inspiring! Now I understand why so many artists and creative people live on the West Coast.

I stayed there 3 night and I enjoyed walking on the beach looking for small jade stones and walking in the bush.

In the evening I soaked up in the hot spa and looked at the stars while speaking with fellow travellers.

Karamea

I heard about Karamea in Punakaiki and went there with my friend Young from South Korea. The journey was a lot of fun via Westport and then up to Karamea. Karamea is a secluded haven with that 'off the beaten track' feeling and is situated at the Northern end of New Zealand's South Island's West Coast.

I stayed at the Rongo artist retreat and turned myself into a part-time stone painter:

One day we created this beach wood tree and we put it on fire in the evening!

The people were very friendly and I had a very good time.

Nelson

After 5 wonderful days in Karamea it was time to leave for Nelson. The strainous drive lasted 9 hours (we had to drop someone in Picton for the ferry crossing). We were happy to arrive at our accomodation.

Nelson is a nice town with a young population due to the University. There is a nice beach with calm water and I had one of my first bath in NZ there.