The reason we were coming to Westport was to do quad-biking, and then visit a town just south called Punakaiki. We arrived in the evening so after we found a campsite, we had a chilled night watching films again, making dinner etc… ready to go quad-biking in the morning.

The campsite lady gave us a leaflet for a quad-biking place, which was further south, and then she pointed us in the right direction for the one that was near Westport. The one on the leaflet looked really good, but thought while we are here we may as well check out this one. We arrived at the place but it didn't look very good, and the quads themselves looked a bit cheap… whereas at the other company they had 4 wheel drive powerful ones and you get taken on a 2 hour tour in the mountains through rivers, mud etc. The leaflet one looked much better so we headed for that as it was on the way to Punakaiki anyway!

We found it and pulled into the car park but no one seemed to be around! After getting out and looking, knocking on the doors etc. we realised it was closed… even though it said on the leaflet it was open 9 to 5, 364 days a year! - surely that wasn't the one day a year it is shut???! Who knows! So that was two things in two days we couldn't do… but at least we have more money for other things!

So we got back in the camper to head to Punakaiki for a quick stop. The reason we were going hear was to see the Pancake Rocks and blowholes. These are a series of limestone stacks, which over thousands of years have eroded to look like giant piles of neatly stacked pancakes. And at high tide ( which luckily we were there for ) the water rushes in and sprays water out of holes at the top of the rocks…which was pretty cool! We bumped into Reemo and his Kiwi Bus there, and walked around it with them.

Then we got back in the camper and headed to Franz Josef… where we will be doing a hike on a glacier. On the way there we passed an amazing 'mirror-lake' which is where the water reflects the mountains above making it perfectly symmetrical. The photos again will not do it justice…