Hello everyone!  After the glacier we continued our northern trek up the West Coast.

This was about a 2 or 3 hour ride.  Not so bad but it would have been shorter if they didn’t have to close the whole route down to do work on a bridge.  There is basically one road that goes North and South along the coast so this would be akin to something like shutting down 95N and 95S for about 4 hours.  Luckily, the south island of NZ has a population of only about 1 million people so after the 4 hours, there were only about 40 cars waiting to get by. Keep in mind again that the bridges are one lane.  We just got out and enjoyed some of the beautiful scenery of the West Coast and chatted some nice folks up from the Marlborough region.

This isn't due to whizzing by in the car. These trees look like this because they are coastal. So cool!

Mike with our favorite ginger beer

From where we stopped to wait for the bridge to be repaired.

This is after we got back on the road. It was starting to get close to sunset.  Such a beautiful area and in total contrast to both Queenstown and Franz Josef.

This was our place we stayed at while in Punakaiki.  It was a really nice two floor villa with all the fixin’s.

This area of NZ is home to the Weka bird.  A cheeky little flightless bird about the size of a large chicken that isn’t afraid of people at all.  This little guy walked right into the driveway and made himself at home.

This is me forging a hand-made knife.  WHAT?  !!!

That's me in the back workin' the belt sander.

Okay, a little background.  In Mike’s web searching, he found this guy in Barrytown (the next town over from Punakaiki) that teaches a hand-forged knife making class.  This sounds weird, right?  Well, we were in the mood for some off-the-beaten-path type activity and this really hit the mark.  Yes, I was skeptical.  Who knows what sort of people make knives in the NZ bush?

When all was said in done, however, it was honestly one of the most fun things we did on the trip. Also, I have a cool knife.   The class was an all day affair starting at 9AM and going until about 4PM.  First, we took a piece of regular old steel and heated up to an orange glow in the forge.  Then we beat the thing with a mallet for awhile.  Then there were multiple sanding steps.  Then, we made the handle out of wood and brass and glued it all together.  Then multiple more sanding steps, some polishing, and staining, and whallaaah!  A hand-made knife.  Ha!  The best thing about this whole process was the guy who ran the show.  He was like if Mike Myers worked on an old New Zealand guy character.  The guy was hilariously funny and had supreme knife-making ability as well as a healthy obsession with the electric eel.

Here are some pics from this crazy day.

Tiff -this one's for you. Me walking a mini-horse like a dog. Awesome.

Mike on the huge adult sized swing! So fun!

Steven - master knife maker

Our entire class! Who knew that 8 people would do this on one day? USA, NZ, Germany, Ireland all represented

Well this was a really fun day but we had to head back to pack up.  We took in the sunset from our semi-private beach.  There was nobody on these beaches, ever really.

We woke up pretty early the next day to check out the whole reason for coming!  The Punakaiki pancake rocks and blowholes.  This is a not fully understood geological formation having something to do with bacterial deposits in the limestone once covered by the ocean in this spot. The limestone looks as if it is stacked, layer upon layer, creating this “pancake” effect.

Pretty dramatic. This was one of the nicest walks we took.  NZ really knows how to care for their natural resources and provides excellent walking tracks for tourism, which is a main source of income for them.

A good representation of what ALL these rocks looked like.

After these amazing sights, we got back on the road and continued northward towards the Tasman area at the very tip of the South Island.  Our trip was coming to an end but we still had a couple more awesome things to see!