We are reluctant to name our next stop, because it is such a lovely place and doesn't need to be too popular! After we had parked Puff in the campsite, the first words we heard, from the next door van, were 'welcome to Paradise'.
The tiny village of Okarito sits at the end of 13km of road off the state highway. It has a big inland waters system of lagoons and rivers, of which more later, and an enormous beach. You can walk along the beach to Three Mile Lagoon and then back through the woods along an old pack track. This is the view back to the Southern Alps from the river mouth, about three miles from the camp site. Magnificent.
This was one of the very few places where the gulls were not immediately begging for food, even when we sat down with sandwiches. That's how quiet and unfrequented the place still is.