After a good soak in the hot pools the previous night we all woke up without stiff legs which we had expected after a days hiking. We chilled out in the morning before heading further up the west coast to Punakaiki, the home of the famous Pancake Rocks. Before heading to the site for 4pm when high tide was in the hope of seeing the blow holes, we checked into our home for the night which was again nothing like we'd experienced before. We'd booked to stay at Te Nikau Retreat which was nestled within the native west coast bush. Ash and I certainly felt like we were back in Asia as we made our way through the rain forest to our little house which was hidden away amongst the trees with the sound of insects and birds playing in our ears. We had our own little room with four beds which were so low they were on the floor but very cozy (see the website for more a better picture of what it looked like www.tenikauretreat.co.nz).

We rustled up some homemade pizza for lunch which were left over from the previous days dinner before heading out to the rocks. These are limestone formations that began forming 30 million years ago when lime-rich fragments of dead marine creatures were deposited on the sea bed, then overlaid by weaker layers of mud and clay. Due to earthquakes the seabed has lifted and then the wind, sea and rain has etched the rocks into pancake like piles that can be seen clearly today. Unfortunately the sea wasn't quite ferocious enough to see the blow holes in full flow but the rock were certainly impressive enough. After a look round the little gift shop we headed back to our retreat where we enjoyed a spag bol dinner accompanied by the bottle of wine that had been tried and tasted at the wine tasting the previous week. We were sharing our little house with two ladies from Israel and a couple from Germany and we had good conversations with both before tucking up in our beds. Again Pete and Ash couldnt resist a bit of glow worm action and headed off in the pouring rain in search. They didnt come across the best worms but Pete did find a little house with a bed in which he could escape too if his snoring got too loud!

The following day we headed north east up to Nelson, again different to any other town we had been to before. The diversity and beauty of New Zealand was becoming more and more apparent as we continued onto the next place. At times we wouldn't see a car for more than 10 minutes which kind of made my game of "guess the colour of the next car" a little bit more exciting but again made us appreciate the vastness of the country we were in. Truly beautiful and unspoilt.