Pancake Rocks.

I woke up early this morning (shortly after Steph the perpetual early riser) dressed quietly, and padded out of the house towards the beach. It was two hours to high tide and already there was no beach left: the waves, just as harsh as yesterday, crashed straight up onto the bluffs. I stood on the boardwalk leading down, out of the eye of the wind, and opened my watercolor kit for the first time in NZ. When a brief squall lashed the headland, I ducked into a shallow cave to wait it out. The painting I started isn't quite finished yet, but it's a good start and I'm even reasonably happy with the way the seafoam came out.

9:00 came too soon, and with another squall. I met Steph on the track leading back, and together we trotted back up to the house. A quick bowl of cinnamon couscous, some packing; while Cindy and Claudia packed, I wrote a postcard at the dining-room table... and oohed at the wild weka that wandered right up to our back door. Steph, who loves birds as much as I love plants, was fascinated. Once we had all our gear together, we headed up to the main lodge to check out. The proprietor had baked us some fresh multigrain bread: we tucked into the warm, soft loaf while again drawing in the guestbook.

An hour or so later, the proprietor drove us back into town. We dropped off our belongings on the sheltered porch of the visitor center, whose DOC personnel assured us yesterday that guests have been doing just that for 20 years, and crossed the road to go see Pancake Rocks.

The area surrounding the rocks is a chunk out of the prevailing ecosystems -- mostly the coastal flax scrub, with a band of palm-treefern-rata bush close to the road. Down at the water's edge is where it gets interesting. Where the hotel's beach had sculpted but dull gray-brown sandstone, this area's bluffs are limestone -- also gray, but striated with thin bands of softer rock so that it erodes into stacks of three-inch-thick "pancake" sheets. These stacks in turn have worn down unevenly into towers and spires, caves and skylights, surge pools and lanes that all channel the waves into roaring, crashing sheets. Especially big waves will shoot up through a blowhole, sending up great gouts of spray and foam. Within twenty minutes of roaming the tortuous stone paths I'd managed to get salt spray on my camera lens. It was worth it, especially once -- ah, wonder! -- the sun actually came out.

Back in town, we found ourselves with a few hours to kill before the bus came. The two shops forming Punakaiki "town" held our attention well enough. One had local crafts and art for sale and a tiny cafe out front; the other hosted on its porch a few tables belonging to a seller of putatively-extra-legitimate greenstone. Red-haired and rather overweight, she claimed to be from one of the few Maori families allowed traditionally to harvest the jade from its single New Zealand river, say a blessing over it, and carve and sell it. She blasted the "factory" pounamu-sellers, claiming that most of their wares are either fake or stolen. I'm not sure how much of her pitch I believe, but her products were lovely and her prices the best I'd seen yet. I bought several pieces, and got the cultural experience for free.

We hopped our bus not long after that, heading away from the coast towards Nelson. I got another lesson in Kiwi road-building style there: at one point I counted six switchbacks in quick succession, each as tight as one from a ski area I used to frequent.

The night's accomodation in Nelson took the form of another quirky hostel, this one a big old house with a penchant for lofts and ladders, called Paradiso. After dinner, I climbed up to the computer loft to look up the details of tomorrow's Abel Tasman trip beginning. Over the computers I met and exchanged low-ceiling jokes with a guy from Bristol, England. David was funny, outspoken, and flirty: I find myself wishing we'd traded numbers or something. That could have been a good friendship. Afterwards, the rest of the girls treated me to a good old-fashioned "OMG you talked to a boy!", half-facetious but entirely amused by the way I shrugged it off.