It was raining quite heavily when we left the Motel so as to have our breakfast at the Speight's prior to heading South towards Okarito.
We stopped briefly outside Kokitika, to be more precise where the Driftwood and Sand Beach Festival had occurred. Most of the sculptures were gone, but what I liked behind the idea of the festival was to allow people to use whichever materials they found on the beach and simply be creative.
We spent some time in Hokitika, namely to visit the Nephrite jade Museum, locally known as pounamu, which holds a strong spiritual significance for the Maori. I found it to be rather expensive, though I ended up buying two jewellery pieces made out of them, as well as some out of bone. We had some time for local shopping and found that there were quite a few craft studios and shops that sold rather unique objects that we hadn't seen anywhere else.
Along the way we stopped for lunch, this time close to a lake where a couple of mallard ducks could be seen calmly swimming. We had lunch out in the open before we drove on. The weather seemed to be getting better which I believe made us all feel a little bit more enthusiastic.
We made a small 4 kilometre walk in the Okarito reagion, which despite being short was nevertheless interesting.
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