Day 157 - Punakaiki, New Zealand

Day 157 – 12th November 2005 +13:00 GMT Total Miles 28539

Woke up to the rain lashing down on our bedroom window so had no motivation to get out of bed, managed to go to the kitchen and make a coffee then returned to bed and spent most of the morning reading my book (presently reading Digital Fortress by Dan Brown). When I finally got up and showered I chatted to a few people at the hostel and then Jill and I went to find the local shop, it was in a café and the shop was about 4ft x 4ft and sold baked beans at four times the cost of the supermarket. We ended up just eating in the café, so after a nice meal of fish n chips we went back to the hostel. Jill did not want to go out due to the weather but I still wanted to explore another track down the road. I drove 2 km down the road to the Truman Path and took the 15 minutes walk to a isolated bay and then walked along the beach watching the huge waves crash into the rocks of the peninsula.


Truman Path Beach


Truman Path Beach


Waterfall on Beach

Along the beach there were some fantastic rock formations and a huge cave that had been eroded away. I walked across a couple of bays before turning around and heading back to the car.


Some Cool Seaweed

Got back to the hostel and read some more already 350 pages through the book. Anyway Reece was due to meet us at the hostel around 8pm so I thought I’d pick him up from the café down the road as that is where the bus should stop. The bus driver actually dropped him off at the hostel so we missed each other but luckily I had seen the bus go past so guessed that had happened. Reece had had a great time on his four day walk, so he showered up and Jill and I sat on the beach and watched the sunset.


Punakaiki Beach


Sunset


Sunset

Then we all went to the pub for a beer and a snack. I then called it a night.