We had a lovely peaceful night with the only sound being the ocean. The weather was much better today. The cloud had lifted and we could see blue sky. After brekky we went for another walk along the beach. It's a very beautiful beach but it wasn't as brooding today in the bright warm sunlight. After this we left the camp site and drove the short distance down the coast to the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. We followed the trail through tropical vegetation to the co...

It was still raining when we woke up. The sky was gloom laden and the wet weather looked to be set in for the day. This wasn't the weather that had been forecasted. It was supposed to be dry today. We had brekky and left the camp site with the rain thrashing down. We drove to the Cape Foulwind lighthouse just a few kilometres away where we had intended to go on a walk along the coast to a seal colony. It was just too wet to get out of the camper van so we didn't ...

It had rained heavily during the night and it was still lashing it down when we got up. We decided to stay in Westport one more night and not do very much today. By mid afternoon the downpours had eased and we had a walk to the beach across the road from the camp site. It was a dark and brooding but quite beautiful beach with black and dark coloured sand. It was littered with washed up timber and there were gorgeous patterns in the sand formed by the advancing an...

After brekky we headed out of Murchison. It was another gorgeous day. About twenty kilometres from Murchison we stopped at the Buller Gorge Swingbridge. At 110 metres long it is the longest swingbridge in New Zealand. It spans the Buller River that we saw rippling past. We both made our way across with me feeling a little uneasy as I hate heights. It was fun though in a kind of scary way. Once across we went on the walking trails through the native bush. The walk...

We decided to stay another night at Murchison. The camp site was good and we liked the camp site dog, a really cute black Scottie with the whitest teeth we have ever seen. After brekky we drove just a short distance down the road to the Matakitaki Scenic Reserve to go on the Skyline Track. It was a fairly steep path that started in some woodland by the car park. We followed the path as it wound it's way through the trees until we emerged just under two kilometres...