September 22 2011
After leaving the pancake rocks, we headed down the road to the Punakaiki Tavern, recommended to us by our friend Michelle. It turns out that her family friends, Joque and Lorraine own and run this place. When we turned up at about 3pm, it was another friend of Michelle’s, Graham that was behind the bar. It was cool to meet a friend of a friend in such a (to me) random location. We had some snacks at the bar, and Graham pointed us to a place where we could camp for free, just a couple hundred meters away at the mouth of the Porarari in Paparoa National Park. When we arrived to set up camp there were several white baiters in the river, as appears to be the case in most rivers in New Zealand.
A little while later, we walked back to the pub to watch some rugby and have some beers. We briefly met Joque and Lorraine, though they were rather busy as I think they might be just about the only place in town which had SKY. We had a good time there, and then strolled back to our little camp site in the dark.
