Day 86 - Pancakes For Breakfast?!

We set off in time to make it to the Pancake Rocks for high tide where we could watch and hear the waves thundering into the cavernous cliffs, spouting huge sprays of water metres into the air and giving the rocks the other name of blowholes. We stood alongside quite a few others who’d also come to watch this spectacle and it kept us, and Corrie’s camera, entertained for 30 or so minutes before we decided to move on.

The next drive was a long one, with many winding roads taking us along the coast and up and down the uneven landscape. We only really stopped for lunch and also for a change of driver to break the trip up a little.

We eventually made it to the longest swing bridge in New Zealand and so had to stop here to see what the fuss was about. Corrie had pestered Danny to go panning for gold at an earlier stop but this didn’t happen due to time restraints and so Danny agreed to give it a go here. We’d bought our tickets to cross the bridge and then we heard from one of the guys there that they weren’t running the gold panning at the moment, on account of there being no gold in the river! With Corrie visibly let down by this we ventured outside the office to cross the bridge. Here we found two Japanese tourists tentatively peering over the edge and, on noticing us, allowed us to go first as they “may be some time!” Really, we didn’t see what all the fuss was about, it was a glorious day and it was a gentle, if not wobbly, walk across to the other side. We guess that this may be a very different story on a windy day. We completed the short loop walk here and then arrived back at the bridge where we were offered the return trip on a tandem zip-line seat thing; we weren’t sure until he offered it at 2 for the price of 1 and so decided “why not?” We were soon speeding over the river; an altogether tamer experience than the Nevis Swing.

Then we drove some more, and more until we finally reached Blenheim and our camp-site for the night. This was to turn into our site for the next 3 nights as tomorrow is Good Friday and the wine tour we’d planned on doing doesn’t run on public holidays. Tomorrow will be a day at a leisurely pace we think.