Pancake... Rocks! Too bad they weren't really pancakes!

So we woke up in the little by-donation campsite called Nelson River Camping. We had arrived the dark, surprise surprise, and so didn't get to see all of the cool stuff it had the night before! It was right along a little river that was a brown-rusty, yet clear, colour from all the beech and birch trees in the area. Had it not been so cold it would have been a great little swimming place as it had some little cliffs to jump from. On the other side of the river only accessible by swimming was a little tiny cave that would have been fun to explore as well. Then just before we drove away we realized there was a little zip-line too! This was the coolest campsite we had stayed at yet!

Pancake Rocks

After way too much fun there, we made our way to Greymouth where we would head north from towards Punakaike. The west coast road is one of the greatest drives we have ever been on. The pictures will give some idea of what they scenery was like. Big waves, nice sandy beaches, cliffs, rock formation and lava rock all over and... pancake rocks. These were in Punakaike. You can see why they have that name from the pictures. They are hundreds of evenly spread thin layers of limestone layered on top of each other only at this place. The formations they created were the coolest. They don't really have a theory for how they got there or were formed. Milessa, however, saw it pretty simply and easily- God made them.

Bizarre sea thing

After spending quite a while at the Pancake Rocks, we drove along the coast to a big cave on the side of the hi-way that's open for exploring. While the opening from the hi-way side was rather small, the cave went on for quite a while! Good thing we had our head torches on because 50-100 meters into a cave it is Pitch Black. Luckily there weren't any monsters like the movies. On the way out we ended up talking to an older Kiwi couple who had noticed that I carried Milessa up or down any stairs or inclines we came to both at this cave and at the Pancake rocks (because of her knees); they figured Milessa had a pretty good deal going! We ended up talking to them for over an hour at the entrance to the cave. It was great to hear about life in NZ and they were both very inerested in life in Canada and had so many questions. One of the things he asked was "What's the security like in Canada? Do you lock your cars everywhere you go?"

Back at our van we found out why he had asked that. We had left our sliding door wide open for an hour and a half on the side of the hi-way! Luckily it was facing the ocean so it wasn't too obvious but this couple had kind-of thought it looked open as they got out their van behind us which must have promted them to ask about the security in Canada! Thank goodness no-one else had noticed as they zoomed by on the highway & nothing was gone. That's how safe this place is. Not that you should leave your doors open!  So that was fun.

Next we headed a little further north to Truman's track. When we were at church in Richmond this fun older guy came up to us and was asking us where we were headed next. He started telling us very excitedly about how we need to "Go to Truman's Track! I up keep that track and my grand-dad made it!" or something like that. He was pretty excited it, so we went not knowing what to expect thinking that it would be fun to see a track that was named after a guy in the church.

Truman does have a track!

Anyways, he was totally right. It was a beautiful and short-ish track through a unique forest and then down to a absolutely stunning beach area. It had massive caves, incredible rock formation and huge waves crashing and creating geysers. We even took some jumping photos just for all the Peterson girls :) It was a beautiful place we did not want to leave...especially when I realized how many stairs I was going to have to carry Milessa up on the way out!

One more cave called me in (Cobden Cave) underneath the hi-way. I went in by myself and it was terrifying. It went down at quite an angle and got dark very quickly. So I didn't go in too far not wanting to get lost at it's multiple tunnels.

We stopped at a campground after passing a path called "Jum Michel Walk" (like my buddy Jean-Michelle) to make supper and within a couple minutes, this little boy came up to our van and very non-shy-ly asked "Where are you from?" It was so funny! He was a little German boy who dressed, talked, and was exactly like Logan Krogsgaard. He even had the same kind of hat on! That made our day. Anyone seeing a German theme in our travels?

Our next free campground was at Gillespie Beach right near Fox Glacier. The roads there were super windy (and rainy) and very fun to drive on. Lots of sandflies made for an uncomfortable night but the view the next morning made up for the flies.