Day 21: Tuesday, March 11, Punakaiki

We arrived on a "bad" day and this water was still spraying up about three stories high.

Today we made another great drive and ended up in Punakaiki. We saw the Pancake Rocks and the accompanying blowholes there. No one knows exactly how the rocks formed, but they definitely look like stacked pancakes. The blowhole effect comes when water rushes into the enclosed spaces and the trapped air pushes back like a compressed balloon.

If you remember back to the beginning of my NZ posts I commented that lots of trucks and SUVs have snorkels for the engine. I assumed this was for driving through parts of NZ’s backcountry after big rains. It turns out I gave the Kiwis too much credit: when I asked someone if this was the case they laughed and scornfully said that the snorkels are just for show. I guess engine snorkels are the Kiwi equivalent of rims and grill guards on the Mercedes SUV that braves the wild suburban landscape.

One thing I really do like about NZ driving is the lack of stop signs. They are usually found in bigger towns, and even then they are very rare. Most intersections that would be four-way stops are roundabouts, and most other intersections just have “Give Way” (yield) signs. This puts more responsibility on drivers to double-check for traffic, but it means you don’t have to make those aggravating and mpg-killing stops at completely empty intersections.

Today we stopped at a jade store on the way out of town since Hokitika is the unofficial jade capital of NZ. After looking through the stores I was a little surprised. It wasn’t that much more expensive than the jade I saw in China several years ago. That tells me that either a) exchange rates are at play or b) the Chinese places were making a killing. I suspect the latter, because the places I went in China were very tourist-oriented. There you saw lines of people behind windows carving jade; here you could go into the back of the shop where three or four locals were shaping jade. The labor costs are certainly much higher here, so I would guess that the profit margins in China were very nice.

Bet you never had to dodge penguins on your trips.