06/12/2022
The West Coast (in Maori: "Te Tai Poutini"), or ‘the Coast’ as locals call it, is a wild place of rivers and rainforests, glaciers and geological treasures. Never more than fifty kilometres wide. It is one of the more remote and most sparsely populated areas of the country. The West Coast is the only part of New Zealand where significant tracts of lowland forest remain-elsewhere. The region has a very high rainfall due to the prevailing northwesterly wind pattern and the location of the Southern Alps – these two elements give rise to heavy orographic precipitation.
