Today we clocked another 230km on the car by travelling to the furthest point available by road up the west coast. That means that we have travelled the South Island west coast highway from bottom to top.
Our first point of call was to a disused historic coal mine at Denniston. Getting there involved turning off the main road and driving to the top of a mountain - steep hairpin bends and narrow roads. The reason for the visit is that Terry has read a couple of novels set in and around that coal mine so she was interested to see what it was like. There is not very much left there now apart from a few derelict buildings and lots of old rusty artefacts. The Dept of Conservation have taken it over and prepared a walking track around the site with information boards etc. From the coal mine atop the mountain the views along the coastline were quite staggering as we were really high up. It was once again a hot sunny day with wall to wall blue sky.
The furthest township north is Karamea, around 95km north of Denniston. It was at Denniston we realised that we were a little low on petrol - the computer thingy in the car told me we had 128kms of petrol left. Realising we were going way out in the wopwops with no petrol stations until Karamea we decided to take the chance and drive on knowing that at the end the petrol tank would be very low, hopefully not empty.
It wasn't long before we wanted our morning coffee and after a while we came to a village which actually had a cafe - but it was closed. Although the owner was there, he obviously didn't want to make us any. So we drove further and came to a bit of a dilapidated pub. The bar was open, but not the adjoining cafe. The man there obviously took pity on us two desperate ladies and offered to make us one. He really didn't know what he was doing and we had to tell him how much instant coffee to put in the mug and even how much to charge us for it. Then he asked "Do you want a cake? There are some here somewhere". We chose a shortbread each and again had to pay what we thought was the appropriate amount! We left chuckling but refreshed (even though it was yucky instant coffee)
Ever northwards, we continued our journey happy that the petrol situation would be ok as we were driving along a long straight road beside the coast. What we didn't know was that, a little distance ahead, we had to drive over high mountain pass thus using low gears and thus consuming more petrol. The climb upwards seemed to take forever and again I had to negotiate many steep hairpin bends and narrow roads We eventually reached Karamea with about 20kms of petrol to spare. Phew!
After a lovely lunch at the appropriately named 'Last Resort Motel' we proceeded a further 16km north up a gravel road to Kohaihai car park, the very end of the road. This was alongside the beautiful Kohaihai river estuary where
the swing bridge marks the beginning of many walking tracks, some 8 or 9 days long. We did a shorter one - 30 minutes up a (small) mountain among beautiful Nikau palms
to Scotts Lookout. It was quite a climb but the view over Scotts Bay was worth the effort
The 'end of the road' was paradise. This is the 'mountain' we climbed. It looks bigger in real life!
On our way home we stopped at Mokihinui to see the river and the estuary. This had been featured on a popular national TV programme a couple of weeks ago as an energy company want to build a huge dam on this beautiful free flowing river thus creating a lake which would cover acres of native forest and decimate many endangered species http://www.wwf.org.nz/?4120%2FMokihinui-river-dam-plan-poses-ecological-disaster---WWF.
We had 'afternoon tea' at a pub/cafe in the village. I do not think the staff there serve much more than beer because I was asked if I wanted milk in my 'flat white' coffee!
We really did spend the day in the back of beyond.
I will finish this long blog with something else I saw today that made me smile. The Ladies and Gents loos at The Last Resort motel were called 'Mangoes' and 'No Mangoes'. Very original I thought.
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