The drive from Greymouth to Nelson was absolutely spectacular. We thought the Great Ocean Road was brilliant in Australia, which it was, but this drive equalled it for sure. You must drive the west coast road on the South island if you come to New Zealand.
Before doing that we stopped at Runanga Falls just 7k outside of Greymouth, it’s about a 30 minute walk there and back through lovely forest and the waterfall at the end is beautiful.
We then hit the road and started to see the fantastic views of the ocean beaches, and also stopped at a place called Punakaiki which is famous for it’s pancake rocks formations and blowhole. It really is a fabulous place to see , nature at it’s most amazing best. It’s New Zealand’s equivalent of the twelve apostles. The drive is spectacular all the way up to Westport, where you then take a right turn to Nelson.
We then thought that the drive would start to normalise somewhat, but we were mistaken. We started to track the Buller river gorge, and found ourselves stopping regularly for more amazing views and scenes of beauty, before we got to a swing bridge (New Zealand’s longest apparently) that you can walk over, so we had to stop there. After the walk along a very wobbly bridge, where I was absolutely paranoid I was going to drop my phone, there is a little circular track to walk around which is absolutely beautiful, and you learn a lot about previous earthquake activity and how it shaped the gorge and river. The whole thing costs about £12 for both of us.
