We had planned to go surfing, but the town was hiving none of that, so instead we headed further south to Punakaiki to check out the pancake rocks, a sea whethered limestone deposit which over time has become a stand-in for an american home on Sunday morning. The sea was absolutely nuts, and some pretty awesome blowholes did pretty good geiser impressions too.
We met up with Morgane and Fran at Greymouth. They are a couple of friends of mine from Auckland that were brave enough to join us in the van! We headed over to Hokitika, further down the coastline. This place is located near the Hokitika river (what were the chances!) which washes down the west coast mountains and Jade deposits. This means that one can find lumps of jade just walking around the beach, and Hokitika has become a busy Jade carving town.
After some jewlery shopping we headed over to the Hokitika Gorge, a brilliand blue lake for lunch. The water is bright blue in evidence of its glacial formation. As the glacier scraped the bottom of the limestone base it pulverised the bottom of what is now the lake. The particles suspended in the water now diffract light in such a way that the blue light is reflected. Or something like that anyhow, I’m no geologist!
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