Tourist in my own country (and a few others)

Nelson Lakes.

The hotel near our cabin at Nelson lakes had an excellent beer selection of Renaissance, and good food as well. Unfortunately a little windy and cold to sit outside. We were staying in St Arnaud, at Lake Rotoiti.

Lake Rotoroa after our walk to the waterfall. Lots of sandflies here!

Cloudy a lot of the time we were there, but got some intermittent blue skies and sun.

On my run, ran down to the other lake edge. As long as I was moving, the sandflies were tolerable! Lake Rotoiti below. And nice skies!

The creek walk behind our cabin, and also leading to the restaurant.

Lovely blue skies as we sat outside waiting for our pizzas. The wind kicked up so we had to move indoors!

Truman Beach

For our final short walk, and lunch, we stopped off at the truman track. A short track through the forest opens up on to a wonderful beach. And the skies were clearing with plenty of sun!

Gorgeous beach, but dangerous west coast surf.

Above, looking back towards the cliffs of the pancake rocks.

And our view from our lunch rock. Seagulls tried to join.

It was warming up with the sun, but still fairly windy and choppy in the sea.

Of course a beer for lunch!

Looking back down to the beach as I was coming up. Lindsay is still down there climbing the large rock. Great lunch spot, now time to drive on to Nelson Lakes.

Pororari River

We then headed over to the Pororari river track. We didn't quite have time to do the whole track, but there was supposed to be a "viewpoint with a bench" a couple km in. We headed through the valley on the well formed track.

So many trees, many of them quite tall. Completely different ecosystem once again!

Heading down the river, several large rocks left over from glaciers I suppose.

And a lovely beach. Turns out on our first pass we missed the bench. So we turned around after 4km or so and headed back.

And the blue sky is coming out!

Punakaiki

For our drive from Hokitika to Nelson lakes, we had a few stops along the way. The first was Punakaiki, home of the pancake rocks/blowholes. Noticed a new sign below, that wasn't there in 2014.

After finding a parking space I took an abbreviated walk through the rocks. Some decent waves coming up through the center.

While the others checked out the caves, I had took the car to a nearby view point. Cloudy skies but nice view!

Hokitika

After Mount Tuhua, we picked up Mom and Sue at Dorothy Falls down the street. We stopped by the hokitika gorge (I had been before, so didn't wander down for pictures), and then to town to our villa! Gorgeous huge house!