© NZPocketGuide.com
© NZPocketGuide.com

Charming Creek Walkway – Day 104

© NZPocketGuide.com

Day 104 on the Road

Charming Creek Walkway on the West Coast

In this video, we are going to be hitting the Charming Creek Walkway, one of the wildest short walks of New Zealand!

If you like this video and want to see more 365 Days: 365 Activities then join the team on YouTube!

Today we are going where no man has gone before. Oh wait they have, they were insane. Today we are making our way to the most charming creek in New Zealand.

This morning we are moving on from Westport and making our way to Charming Creek Walkway. It’s only 35km from Westport but along the way we see something pretty bizarre. It looks like the ocean is like a giant washing machine blowing all this crazy amount of foam onto the road. It looks absolutely mental. We takes some pictures and arrive at the creek.

This is going to be an interesting hike. We’re going to be doing most of the walk under canopy so we should be quite sheltered. With that in mind, off we go. So we are on the Charming Creek Walkway going up to the main waterfall. The rain has stopped for a little while so we’re kind of hustling pretty hard right here to make sure that we are in front of the waterfall before the rain starts again.

The Charming Creek Walkway is our adventure of the day it’s an awesome walkway that takes about 3 hours to complete. It goes all the way to a massive waterfall that we have heard a lot about. It’s a one way track so we’ll come back the way we came in so it gives us the opportunity to rush right now so we can avoid the rain and get all the way to the end. The Walkway is located near the town of Ngakwau or I don’t know how to pronounce that to be honest and this used to be a massive coal mining and forestry area so we are following the walkway that used to carry timber and coal from the mine and the forestry around. This makes it for a very easy path to follow. It is wide enough. It is very obvious. There is no way you can get lost, despite being in the middle of thick native bush.

But one thing is omnipresent during our hike, is the massive torrential noise of the river below so we can’t help ourselves but make our way a little bit sidetrack and go check it out it’s crazy the power of this river and we can picture this river being much lower when it hasn’t been raining for weeks.

Another really cool thing about that hike is that it takes us through a lot of really cool stuff like mine shafts, as well as really precarious bridges. It’s really awesome to have a track which is so diverse and yet so unknown. We really love it.

Although it hasn’t quite started raining yet, this track is determined to get us wet with all these amazing waterfalls falling onto the track. There are some sections as well which are pretty scary. There are rock fall sections so I’m not wasting any time here. But the overall feel of the track is actually really charming. It’s really unusual. There is ton of little waterfalls, moss-covered rocks. It’s a really quaint little track and I really see where it gets its name from.

Well Robin and the rest of the world can call this place Charming Creek Walkway but I think the pioneers were absolutely crazy for building a railway here. There are parts that are falling into the gushing river below. there’s rockfall areas all over the place. This place is absolutely wild and we can see exactly why the West Coast of New Zealand is called the Wild West Coast. And now the weather seems to have really picked up. it is absolutely chucking it down with rain and we are getting soaked but to be fair, this makes the place all the more amazing. The colours are a lot more vibrant it’s super green. We’re really having a blast despite the rain, you know, hitting us super hard.

Like every single walk in New Zealand, this walk features a swing bridge as well. this one crosses the torrential river below and it’s quite a feat. Then we keep on following the railway track which I do not understand how it crossed the river. And we finally arrive at the Mangatini Falls. This is a massive wide and gushing waterfall. I have never seen a waterfall that big before.

Today the waterfall is looking raging compared to the picture perfect photos we’ve seen of that waterfall. But we decide that this is a good time to turn around because the water level of the river is rising and then rain is not stopping. it’s time to hit the road.

While on the road we play one of the many games that we play usually. This one is aimed at improving my English vocabulary which is pretty poor. I basically have to make up definitions for very fancy words that Laura reads from the dictionary. it’s quite cool. And it leads us to the little township of karamea where we’re going to be spending the next few days.

Luckily right now we’re feeling… Handbrake Robin… [laughing]. Aside from that, er…

Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter