Greymouth to Westport

The coastline north of Greymouth is much more interesting with rocky headlands and sandy bays. A little bit like the pacific north west in the USA.







On the way we thought we had seen a kiwi, but actually it was a flightless bird called a Weka. Flightless birds evolved in NZ because when it separated from the original huge continent, no mammals were here so birds had no preditors on the ground. Thus they grew bigger and lost the ability to fly.










Pancake rocks are particularly interesting with blow holes that the waves shoot out from. Unfortunately we weren't there at high tide when it's most spectacular.








From there we went to see the seal colony at Cape Foulwinds. What a great name!








We stopped there for lunch at an excellent cafe with great views across the bay.




Jean's reading a book called Denniston Rose about a coal mine just north of Westport, so of course we had to go and take a look. The village is deserted now, but when it was working the coal went down the mountain 1500 ft in skips on an incline.






The weight of the full skips pulled the empty ones back up. In the 1800's, the only way up and down was in the skips and apparently, some women went up and never came down again. ( at least alive – all the dead were taken down in the skips to be buried on the coast.