A little luck with the weather, as we woke up to a bit more sunshine than the day before. This didn’t stay out long, especially not long enough to see any more white herons. We packed up and left in the rain, however this eased slightly when we arrived at a nearby walking track that took us through kiwi habitat. Palin wasn’t allowed here, for obvious reasons, but it was only short. We were led up a much steeper hill than we were prepared for, that took us to a platform overlooking the Okarito Lagoon. The grey clouds had lifted just enough for us to see enough of the lagoon to make us wish we could have seen more. I had no idea the Okarito Lagoon was considered such an amazing place, but the numerous photos and pamphlets at the campground told me it was. There are no walking tracks that go anywhere near it, but you can either hire a kayak or have a guided tour, or both. They also informed me that the white heron is found in the tropics, where it is known as the Great Egret, and that Okarito Lagoon is the only nesting site in New Zealand. And we saw four of them for free.
We actually did very little on our travels between Okarito and Greymouth. We had organised our trip to allow for more time on the West Coast, since people told us this was the more interesting coast. Unfortunately, a lot of what makes it so interesting is the bush and the walks that go with them, and as we very quickly found out, the vast majority of these do not allow dogs. We found a recreation area just outside Whataroa that turned out to be a historic gold mining site, although there was no obvious evidence of this just, that said nothing of dogs being prohibited, so we let Palin out. Very soon after this it started pouring down, at which point Palin chose to run off and refused to come when called. He finally returned to a soaking wet, angry me who quickly put him back in the truck and left. There were no pink dots on my atlas, other than a number of art galleries and old gold mining towns, so we drove along looking for places to places to pull over for the sake of it. This was not as easy as we had hoped because of the apparent omnipresence of that pesky little crossed out dog. Some of the places we pulled over at only to find Palin was prohibited included Lake Ianthe and Lake Mahinapua.
It was lunchtime and we were almost in Greymouth. Not wanting to arrive at the campground too early, we desperately searched for somewhere to have lunch that would allow dogs. Noticing an angler’s access down to the Taramakau River, we decided this would be perfect and so found a spot somewhere in the middle of the stony riverbed. Palin befriended another dog wandering ownerless, while we had lunch.
We drove past the turnoff to Shantytown, an ‘old goldmining town’ with a difference, this one remains in character and charges an admission fee. So it was straight through to Greymouth, heart of the appropriately named Grey District, where we checked into the Southbeach Motor Camp then carried on to the town centre. We found a park as inconveniently distant from the post shop as possible, and walked back in order to part with more of our already too-small bank balances in exchange for enough road user charges to get us home, as well as post my brother’s belated birthday present. After this we returned to the campsite and immediately took advantage of the free spa pool and free internet. Much of the afternoon, and all of the evening, remained ahead of us so we made ourselves comfortable in the communal lounge. This is a sign that our trip is winding down, and we can no longer resist our natural human instinct to eat dinner in front of the TV.
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