Greymouth to Nelson
NZDH Greymouth to Nelson Chapter
When one thinks of the West Coast, visions of rugged and dramatic hills, acres of
rainforest and spectacular surf spring to mind, but from Greymouth to Westport the
scenery also has an almost tropical appeal with nikau palms sprouting from glistening
white sands and clinging to rocky escarpments. In Punakaiki, a friendly holiday
town made famous by its stunning pancake rocks, salty spray flies from blowholes,
while nearby Westport, a town often overlooked, provides many unique activities
for the intrepid traveller. Inland, avid anglers have the opportunity to try their
luck on the internationally renowned waters of the Murchison/Nelson Lakes region,
where some of the best fly fishing in NZ can be found on Lake Rotoroa, Lake Rotoiti,
and up the Travers, D’Urville and Sabine Rivers. We spend three days driving the
scenic route from Greymouth to Nelson. We visit a world renowned pounamu (jade)
sculptor, admire Punakaiki’s pancake rocks, ride rapids aboard jet skis in Westport,
enjoy indigenous cuisine, join a thrilling whitewater rafting expedition down the
mighty Buller River, and angle for elusive brown trout!
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Day One
Greymouth to Westport, via Punakaiki
Overnight Bob’s been doing his research on the famous pancake rocks in Punakaiki
and he’s keen to get on the road. But first we call into the acclaimed Jade Boulder
Gallery, a museum that tells the story of this precious stone, known to the Maori
as pounamu. There’s lots to see including a range of unique sculpture and jewellery
designed and handcrafted by Ian Boustridge and his team of master carvers; some
of the pieces took over a year to design and sculpt. At the entrance we marvel over
a five-ton jade boulder – the largest to be recovered in the Southern Hemisphere.
Bob places his hands on its smooth, cool surface like an alternative healer extracting
its energy and then we meet Ian (named as one of the top five jade sculptors in
the world by the National Geographic Society) in his studio where he’s busy working
on a new piece.
“I guess my passion for jade began when I was about 17 years old,” Ian tells us,
“I used to collect the stone and carve it in my grandmother’s chook-house.” Today,
some thirty years later, collectors worldwide covet his work.
We drive north to Rapahoe where the road joins the coast and offers fabulous views
of rugged hills, dramatic headlands and rolling surf. From Barrytown the landscape
changes: coastal plains dotted with nikau palms are flanked by bush-clad hills.
More palms cling obstinately to the layered rock escarpments in Punakaiki, creating
a tropical backdrop to the green-blue sea. “It’s got a Hawaiian feel!” says Bob
as we park the car and walk the Dept. of Conservation track to the blowholes at
Punakaiki’s famous pancake rocks. The timing couldn’t be more perfect: it’s high
tide and there’s a good ocean swell so salt-laden spray is flying. Bob gets some
great shots and then after lunch at Punakaiki Tavern we walk along the beach and
collect pieces of perfectly polished, purewhite quartz.
There are several good hikes in the area including the Pororari River Track, the
Truman Track, Fox River Cave Walk, Cave Creek/Kotihotiho Walk and the Punakaiki-Pororari
Loop, but our legs have been stretched, and so we continue north. On the outskirts
of Punakaiki we visit the Te Miko Glass Bead Studio, where we watch Carolyn Hewlett
as she crafts each individual flame-worked bead, before we drive to Westport and
join a unique jet-ski tour with Xtreme Adventures on the lower reaches of the Buller
River.
After donning wetsuits our small group gets a safety rundown and quick basic lesson
from guide Steve Reynolds then we’re off, charging up the river behind Steve. At
first it’s pretty mellow and there’s plenty of time to practise our manoeuvres.
Bob rides companionably by my side for a short time, then drops back to jump my
wake. Then we swap over. It’s loads of fun and just as we think it can’t get any
better we hit the rapids, flying off the back of one wave then hitting another.
Seventy kilometres later we return, exhilarated, to Westport. After checking into
our accommodation and enjoying hot showers, we drive to Tauranga Bay (near Cape
Foulwind) for a late afternoon stroll to the seal colony.
As the sun begins to set our mighty appetites lead us to Tauranga Bay’s acclaimed
Bay Café. Here we discover a modern NZ menu featuring some of the country’s finest
fare from squid stuffed with kumara and coconut served with a sweet curry sauce,
to caramelized passion-fruit and lemon tart. “Oh what to choose,” sighs Bob as we
relax and peruse the menu at a candle-lit window table overlooking the bay. In the
end he decides upon one of chef Luke Macann’s past entries into the Monteiths’ Wild
Food Challenge, ‘All clammed up and nowhere to go‘. “Unbelievably tasty,” Bob says
later, swallowing his last morsel of this indigenous ragout of shellfish accompanied
by Tauranga Bay seaweed salad, tua tua wontons, and horopito and watercress purée.
“I would never have believed wild foods could taste this good!”
+ more +
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Day Two
Westport to Murchison
In the morning the feasting continues with a hearty breakfast in town before we
visit Coaltown, a museum that brings Westport’s history alive through its sawmilling,
gold and coal mining, and shipping displays. We spend an hour looking around and
then leave town on SH6 following the Buller River inland to Inangahua Junction,
then on through the Upper Buller Gorge Scenic Reserve to Newton Flat where, shortly
after, we stop at the 110 metre long swingbridge over the raging Buller Gorge. We
enjoy a latté then cross the wobbling bridge to the other side, where we decide
to ride the comet line, a 160 metre long flying fox, back across the river. It’s
a blast; but Bob’s slightly vertiginous, and yells all the way!
After a lunch of egg and cucumber sandwiches in nearby Murchison, a small town that
offers a range of high adrenaline activities – most of which centre on or around
the river – we don wetsuits at Ultimate Descents and join a whitewater rafting tour.
Bob’s a little hesitant, he’s not sure what to expect, but after we board our raft
and receive expert instruction from Dean, our whitewater rafting guide, he begins
to visibly relax.
The first stretch of river is tame - great for first-timers. I slip into a quiet
reverie as our raft drifts along the Buller’s crystal clear waters; a kaleidoscope
of colours reflect from the surrounding hills onto the river’s glassy surface and
beneath lies a riverbed of perfectly polished pebbles. “F-O-R-WARD!” Dean’s bellowed
commands suddenly shatter the silence. “LEFT! RIGHT! F-O-R-W-A-R-D!” Bob shoots
me a horrified look as our raft gathers momentum, sweeps around a bend, and we come
face to face with a tumbling tower of bottle-green waves and foaming white wash.
For a precarious moment we perch at the crest of the towering wall, then we’re at
right angles descending into the roaring foam.
The last thing I see before the world turns abruptly white is Bob’s grimly determined
expression.
Through the white-out Dean can be heard shouting at us to hold on. Between gasping
and screaming there’s no time for communication at our end of the raft!
Seconds later we emerge from the rushing icy whiteness only to charge headlong into
another rapid. Adrenaline kicks in and we’re loving it. Eventually we emerge at
the other end - totally unscathed. “That was amazing,” says Bob later, as we’re
checking into a farm stay on the outskirts of Murchison. Then he gives me a strange
expression, “You know I’m positive I came face to face with a trout!”
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Day Three
Murchison to Nelson
After his fishy encounter on the Ariki Falls, Bob decides a spot of fly fishing
is in order today. Fortunately we’re in precisely the right place for the trout
fishing at Lakes Rotoroa and Rotoiti, and up the D’Urville, Sabine and Travers Rivers
is internationally renowned.
We drive to beautiful Lake Rotoroa nestled against the mountainous backdrop of the
Nelson Lakes National Park and while Bob shoots off with local fishing guide, Russell
Frost, I hike up the beginning of the Porika track, a rocky zigzagging four-wheel
drive route, with excellent lake and mountain views.
Then, as I’m not expecting Bob to return until noon, I hike a short way along the
lakeside track, a rough path through podocarp and beech forest which skirts around
the eastern shoreline of the lake to Sabine Hut, before doubling back to meet Bob
at the car.
He’s had an “awesome” morning stalking brown trout and tells me all about it as
we drive to the village of St. Arnaud, where we stop for a late lunch at Tophouse,
an historic cob (mud) cottage which dates back to the 1880s. Back in its early days
the lodge was frequented by drovers transporting sheep through the valley and onto
the Marlborough and the Canterbury plains.
After seeing the bullet holes in the verandah (left after a double murder / suicide
in 1894), and perusing the range of local arts and crafts housed in what was once
NZ’s smallest bar, we drive down to the lake and hop aboard Bill Butters’ water
taxi service. His service is used by trampers hiking the four to seven day Travers-Sabine
circuit or completing day hikes such as the Lake Rotoiti Circuit, the Mount Robert
loop track, the St Arnaud Range track, and the Whisky Falls track.
Others, like us, hire his services for a scenic tour of the lake. A local born and
bred (his family has lived here since the 1860s), Bill tells us he moved back here
in ‘85 for a lifestyle change. On the far side of the lake he shows us the breathtaking
Whisky Falls and at the lake head the water is so clear that we can see trout undulating
in the current. On the return Bob tells Bill all about his morning fly fishing excursion.
“What did you do?” Bill asks me. When he discovers that I’ve never hooked a trout
before he gets excited. “My wife Betty can teach you!” he exclaims.
Bob’s so keen that I too experience the pleasure of trout fishing that he shouts
me the lesson and before I know it, Betty’s down on the shore and I’m booked into
a two-hour “Troutwise Women” course. Bob takes off to the Dept. of Conservation
visitor centre to view its displays, then hikes through beech forests dripping with
honeydew and swarming with bellbirds in the Rotoiti Nature Recovery Project, while
I head off with Betty for my first fly fishing lesson.
To begin with Betty shows me classic trout tucker – live nymphs, then I’m taught
how to prepare my rod with a weight forward floating fly line and a nymphing rig.
The rig has a small artificial nymph on the bottom, a weighted nymph above and a
strike indicator attached so I can easily identify a strike.
Next up is tension casting. “Look where you’re aiming,” Betty instructs as I cast
the line. Once this is mastered I then learn to mend the line; a key part of the
lesson. “If you don’t mend properly it won’t matter how good your casting is, the
nymph will look unnatural as it floats through the water and the trout will ignore
it,” says Betty.
Mending the line proves difficult, but after a lot of practice my nymph is moving
through the water in a natural drag-free drift and Betty says I’m ready to fool
a wily old trout. She leaves me to play while she pours us a thermos tea and suddenly
my indicator disappears. It’s a strike! I yank the rod upwards and holler for help.
Betty comes running with the net and I jump up and down like a sixyear- old catching
her first sprat.
“How’d it go?” asks Bob later when we triumphantly return. “Magic,” I say as I load
my six-pounder carefully into the chilly-bin (much to Bob’s horror as he’s strictly
a tag and release kind of guy). We wave goodbye to Bill and Betty as we leave town
and head north to Richmond. Then, instead of driving into the city, I indicate for
Ruby Bay.
“If we’re staying in Nelson,” says Bob, consulting the map, “We’re going the wrong
way!”
“Oh – sorry – change of plan,” I reply, “I thought we’d stay at Clayridge instead.”
“Why the sudden change?” asks Bob in a puzzled tone.
“W-e-ll – it’s got fabulous rooms, great views, a good breakfast... oh yes and then
there’s the broadband...” I end lamely. Bob shoots me a quizzical look.
“OK, I’m sprung,” I admit impatiently, “but we’ve got a trout on ice in need of
a good smoking and Clayridge is closer to the Smokehouse Café!”
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