Going north again

The Arthur’s Pass road meets the coast just south of the town of Greymouth so almost all of my journey north was retracing the route I took south on Wednesday and Thursday.

I stayed overnight in Okarito because I’d hoped to do some kayaking on the lagoon there:

Unfortunately, the kayak rental shop was closed for the morning and I really wanted to get back up to Greymouth at a sensible time. I’m annoyed at myself for forgetting to phone the day before but, with the re-arranging of the glacier walk, it slipped my mind until after they’d closed.


There isn’t all that much to Okarito itself. At least, not anymore. It used to be a major sea port when gold was found nearby. Founded in 1865, it was soon home to thousands of would-be gold miners. Although the gold at Okarito itself was exhausted in a year or so, the town survived as a central point for the working of other seams in the area. In fact, the last mining continued until as recently as 1943.


Today, the town boasts only a few dozen permanent residents. I took this picture of the main street. It also includes the (annoyingly closed) kayak rental business:

If you look very closely, hiding behind the New Zealand Flax on the extreme right, there’s a windsock. Yes, Okarito has an airstrip. It was right next to the campsite, though I can’t say that I was kept awake by air traffic.


It’s a very community-oriented town. It’s at the end of a 15km or so side road off the main north-south highway. There is a community camp site (where I stayed), a community plant nursery, a community tennis court. If you lived there and fitted in, it would be great. Any other combination would be hell.

On the way back out, I stopped to walk up the DOC’s Pakihi trail. This is a short walk through the rainforest:

Leading to an outlook over the (badly overexposed) lagoon:

At a loose end, I headed back into Franz Josef to do a little shopping. Several times, as I’ve driven out of the south end of Franz, I’ve noticed a little sign advertising a historic church. Having some spare time, I popped in for a look:

Although services at St James Anglican Church appear to be little more frequent than quarterly it was clean and well-maintained. Like the Church of the Good Shepherd in Tekapo that I visited on my last time in NZ, St James has a picture window behind the altar – this time looking up the Franz Josef valley. When it was built in 1925 there would have been a view of the glacier, but that has now retreated a bit. Still if the sermon’s boring, there must be some inspiration in a view like this:

Since I was last here, a new attraction has opened north of the town of Ross – a treetop trail:

I think this would probably be better in summer, but there is something innately thrilling about walking along the gantries high in the forest – it certainly gives you a different perspective. There are regular information boards telling you about the trees you can see and birds you might see. Of course, the advantage of coming in winter is that it, like everything else, is much quieter.

The walk provides fantastic views over Lake Mahinapua which I have singularly failed to capture here:

Last time I passed this way, I actually camped at the DOC site by the lake and managed a much better photograph then. See here.

The Lake formed part of an inland waterway route to the West Coast as it was opened up, mainly in the rush to find gold. A pair of paddle steamers were built to provide passage over the lake. A replacement for one of them is now, rather bizarrely, encased in concrete at the camp site, where I stopped by for old times’ sake:

And, yes, there’s another picture of that back up the blog a bit from when I was here before.


From there, it was north again. I wrote before of the One Lane Bridges that are frequent occurrences here. I suspect that, in summer, they could be a real hold-up, but I’ve only actually had to stop once so far. I also wrote of the bridge that takes this concept one stage further. As well as the two lanes of traffic in one lane, it includes the main railway line. I didn’t have time to take a picture before, but I made a point of stopping this time:

After the treetop walk and Lake Mahinapua, I set the satnav for Greymouth for a very important meeting.