I think I first heard of Okarito village as the home of a really excellent landscape photographer called Andris Apse. Okarito Lagoon is the main landform in the area, and there are good views of it, and on clear days of the Southern Alps (probably), from the small hill of Okarito Trig, just on the edge of the lagoon. It’s an easy walk over a wetland and up through attractive forest to get there.
We had a lot of typically wet and cloudy weather on our stay in the area, so we didn’t get the views of the Southern Alps, but it was still a nice walk. There’s also a longer option to walk down the coast a bit, and return at low tide along the coastline.
Track notes at the end.
Okarito Trig Walk: The Scenery
Track Notes
The track is constructed and obvious. There’s more information on tracks in the area on the DOC website. We also did a shorter walk on the drive out called the Pakihi Walk.
Thanks for covering this walk, we did the option of returning along the beach (& the suspension bridge to no where😁) & decided it was one of our favourite walks on the west coast with hardly any one to be seen. A shame most people zoom past on the highway.
Cheers Tony. Did you get any views of the Southern Alps? We didn’t get to see them the whole trip due to the weather. We’ll have to go back.
We did get to see the Alps, we were there in 2018 & had some magic weather in between the 2 cyclones, there were some huge uprooted trees along the track as well at the time. On a nice day the colour contrasts between the water, sky, vegetation & mountains is superb. I would be happy to send you a few pictures from our walk but not sure if I could attach them here.
Cheers Tony. Some photos would be great. You could email them to me if you don’t mind: edwardhathway@yahoo.com.au