After a chat with the campsite owner we took his advice and drove up the road that hugged the coast northwards in order to visit the Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki. These are limestone rocks that look like stacked pancakes right on the cliff edge. At high tide the waves crash through blowholes in spectacular fashion. As luck would have it we arrived at low tide but still managed to see a small one or two spurts of water. this part of the coast is often compared to the Big Sur in the US and we could see why,long sandy beaches with huge rolling breakers but not safe for swimming at all. the road carried on to Westport which was a proper town with supermarkets and the first fuel for 100km. The supermarket had wifi so we knew we had reached civilisation but we had to press on to cross the Southern Alps towards the East coast. At first we drove through more ubiquitous rain forest but it sooner turned to normal beech forest as we climbed higher up the river valleys. The first and only town on this route through he Lewis Pass is Reefton. Amazingly this was the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to have electricity back in the 1880's due to its gold and coal wealth. It still has some coal and gold being mined and so the typical frontier town buildings have not all been turned into tourist shops. Further along the countryside became even wilder with only the very occasional farm in a plateau.The road clung precariously to the hillsides which resembled moorland until we reached our campsite in a area famous for its thermal springs and pools.