April 1, 2016
Today we moved further out and across the Endeavour Inlet to a place called the Punga Cove Resort. The attractions: their funky little deck cafe on the water (recommended by our mail boat crew) and access to the Kenepuru Saddle, which we hoped would be a good viewpoint.
Like the Furneaux Lodge, Punga Cove Resort is on the Queen Charlotte Track, right at the spot where the track angles from the shore back up to the mountain ridges. It’s more casual than the Furneaux Lodge, older and more rustic but with lots of charm. Its tiny A-frame cabins perch on the hillside, the guests are mostly Queen Charlotte Track hikers stopping for in a night.
We picked up one of their moorings and headed in to check out the cafe and hike up to the saddle. The cafe was cute and laid back, specializing in homemade pizza, sandwiches, etc. We found out the mooring would be $25 a night, but if we ate in their main restaurant for dinner it would be free for that night. We didn’t even know they had a restaurant besides the cafe; so we knew nothing about it. The nice girl suggested we could head to the lodge’s main office to look at the menu and make a decision.
The menu didn’t have many items, and while the restaurant wasn’t cheap it also wasn’t outrageously expensive–$25 would about pay for one of our meals. We decided we could find things to order and made reservations for dinner, hoping it would be worthwhile. It was. (More on that in a later post.)
We also got advice on getting to the Kenepuru Saddle: take an easy hike up through the resort to the parking area above it, then head up the unsealed road to the saddle, about a 40 minute hike in all.
Below, a gallery of photos of the Punga Cove Resort, the anchorage, and of course . . . the pizza from the dockside cafe. (click to enlarge and scroll).–Cyndi
