Explore The West Coast
South of Westport, SH67 crosses the Buller River and picks up the SH6, the main West Coast road. This stretch of coast is home to the Paparoa Range, a 1500m granite and gneiss ridge inlaid with limestone that separates the dramatic coastal strip from the valleys of the Grey and Inangahua rivers. In 1987, the coastal limestone country was designated the Paparoa National Park, one of the country’s smallest and least-known parks. The highlight is undoubtedly Pancake Rocks, where crashing waves have forced spectacular blowholes through a stratified stack of weathered limestone. But to skip the rest would be to miss out on a mysterious world of disappearing rivers, sinkholes, caves and limestone bluffs best seen on the Inland Pack Track, but also accessible on shorter walks.
Maori often stopped while travelling the coast in search of pounamu (greenstone), and early European explorers followed suit seeking agricultural land. Charles Heaphy, Thomas Brunner and two Maori guides came through in 1846, finding little to detain them, but within twenty years this stretch was alive with gold prospectors at work on the black sands at Charleston.
Visitor services are centred on Punakaiki, close by the Pancake Rocks, where bus passengers get a quick glimpse and others pause for the obligatory photos. A couple of days spent here will be well rewarded with a stack of wonderful walks, horse riding or canoeing up delightful limestone gorges.
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Punakaiki and the Pancake Rocks
Punakaiki and the Pancake Rocks
The Pancake Rocks and blowholes at PUNAKAIKI are often all visitors see of the Paparoa National Park, as they tumble off the bus opposite the twenty-minute paved loop track which leads to the rocks. Layers of limestone have weathered to resemble an immense stack of giant pancakes, the result of stylobedding, a chemical process in which the pressure of overlying sediments creates alternating durable and weaker bands.
Subsequent uplift and weathering has accentuated this effect to create photogenic formations. The edifice is undermined by huge sea caverns where the surf surges in, sending spumes of brine spouting up through vast blowholes: high tide with a good swell from the south or southwest sees the blowholes at their best.
More shapely examples of Paparoa’s karst landscape are on show on a number of walks. Inside the Punakaiki Cavern, 500m to the north, you’ll find a few glow-worms (go after dark: torch essential) and, 2km beyond that, the Truman Track (30min return) runs down from the highway to a small beach hemmed in by wave-sculpted rock platforms.
Apart from the rocks, there’s good river swimming in the Pororari and Punakaiki rivers, and sea bathing at the southern end of Pororari Beach, a section also good for point-break surfing.
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Paparoa walks and the Inland Pack Track
Paparoa walks and the Inland Pack Track
The best way to truly appreciate the dramatic limestone scenery of the Paparoa is on the Inland Pack Track (27km; 2–3 days), but this should only be undertaken by folk with plenty of hiking experience. Most of the terrain is easy going, but there are no bridges for river crossings, and while the water barely gets above your knees in dry periods, the rivers can become impassable after rain. With less time or greater demand for comfort, some of the best sections can be seen on two day-walks.
