Sunday March 19, 2023 - Westport to Karamea to Dennison to Cape Foulwind

 

Cereal and yogurt this morning before heading up the coast to Karamea. This is a one way up and back and while you can go a bit past Karamea, the road ends. Lots of oceanfront, very little traffic (campervans and local folks), then lots of twist mountain roads which our little Toyota carves through nicely. We also ran into lots of one lane opportunities as some of the road would be washed out and one of the lanes is missing. An easy fix is to put some cones around the giant washed out hole and a couple of those one way bridge signs and then fix the road at your leisure. We discussed this "personal responsibility" thing today. In New Zealand you are expected and warned that it is your responsibility to not fall in a hole beside the road. It's your responsibility to watch your kids so they don't fall off the cliff. We have not seen a personal injury lawyer billboard since we arrived here.

Karamea is a small town at the end of the road. We stopped at Vinnie's to get the obligatory chai latte and flat white. It was worth the drive up just to see the remote oceanfront vistas and mountain passes. People who live here are here on purpose scratching out a living. We are beginning to think that New Zealand has a lot of land for the number of people and that's pretty okay.

So back down the coast and next stop is Denniston (details here) which is, or was, a coal mining town that began in the late 1800's and was in existence until the 1980's. We ended up spending the entire afternoon hiking the pathways organized by DOC (Department of Conservation). Classic mining history with coal production peaking in 1910 when the population on top of the mountain hit 1500 or so. They pushed carts of coal out of the mine, then put the coal in cars on rails connected with cables, and then transferred the coal to an incline station that dropped the rail cars full of coal over the bank held back by cables and steam powered wheels and down to a waiting train. At some point they changed to using overhead coal carts (like ski lifts) to move the coal.

DOC did a great job with informative signs and hiking paths so you could see where all the stores, houses, hospital, power stations, blower buildings, etc. were. Lots of overgrown foundations are still there but they add pictures of what used to be there 100 years ago so you can visualize it.

Well that pretty much shot the day so we decided to drive down to Cape Foulwind (named by Capt Cook who had a bad weather day there) and stopped for dinner at Star Tavern. We sat outside in the sun and were entertained by some young kids on the playground, and also a weka. Wekas are shifty birds about the size of a chicken that are always looking to steal any food they can. After dinner we went to the Cape Foulwind Walkway that goes from the Cape Foulwind lighthouse to the seal colony (3.5km). We only had enough steam to walk in a half hour or so. Then a quick stop at the New World grocery store for tomorrow's road food and then back to the ranch. Awesome weather today, thanks Big Guy!