The West Coast of New Zealand is beautiful! We spent a few days between Westport and Haast enjoying the scenery, good weather, and fun activities. Here’s some highlights…
 

Caving Adventure

Not knowing much about it we randomly signed up for a cool-looking caving tour, and it turned out to be worth it. The cave is undeveloped; only a guide rope has been added. We entered armed with wetsuits, headlamps, and a small inner tube in tow. The cave formations were very impressive, and part way through we turned off our lights in the middle to see the absolute darkness in the cave. Then we descended to the lower level of the cave which has water that flows into the nearby river. We boarded our inner tubes, turned off our lights, and floated through the cave with millions of “glow worms” lighting up the cave ceiling above us. Glow worms are small worms that live on rocks and catch insects with tiny sticky threads hanging down. And, their bums light up! Floating through the glow worm cave was magical.
 

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Pancake Rocks

There’s a funny set of rock formations along the coast called Pancake Rocks. During high-tide and rough seas, large waves will cause water to shoot up through blowholes, making large booming sounds and showering nearby rocks (and sometimes tourists). We spent a couple hours watching the explosions and trying to get cool videos and photos. It was good fun.
 

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The Beautiful West Coast

 

Yes, there are a lot of sheep in New Zealand. Near Westport we ran into a sheep drive! We just parked the car and waited for the sheep dog to chase the sheep further along on the road.