West Coast, New Zealand

18^th March 2015.

It has been quite a journey.

We woke up this morning in a ridiculously cold weather, I’d dare say it was easily 0 or subzero temperature. But overnight the cloud has cleared Alhamdulillah. Appa claimed he could witness a star or two during the night. We drove to Hokitika. Took us about one a half hour journey across the Kumara Junction Highway.

Along the way we could see endless mountains decorated with creeks and shallow rapids, which made for a beautiful background. Approaching Hokitika, after taking a bend near the town of Awatuna, the ocean came into view.

Hokitika is a quaint little town, very proud of their history as shown by the museum which stands strong in the middle of the town. It has its own historical walks. How many small towns could boast about its history? But we were busy looking for toilets, as our troops are at best only comfortable peeing in the motorhome. The second business takes a lot of guts to be done with your family sitting right outside the toilet.

After taking care of business at the numerous public toilets available in town, we drove 10 km south of Hokitika towards Lake Mahinapua Scenic Reserve. The lake is famous for its lukewarm water (which we found out to be about Malaysian tap water temperature) and other sports activities. Unlike our first night at Mt. White Station, Lake Mahinapua has plenty of campervans sharing the view with us. The DOC site is complete with toilet sheds and washing basins, the best one we’ve been to yet. Plenty of walks around this area, we did the simplest one: Bell Loop Walk which took us about 20 minutes.