Food · Mount Aspiring National Park
A welcome coffee and meal stop on a long, sparsely serviced drive.
Overview
Map
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Mount Aspiring Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Mount Aspiring National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Mount Aspiring audio tourRecorded for this area
A Cicada's Last Moult“If you find a hollow insect skin clinging to a tree trunk, you may be looking at a cicada's last moult. Before it could fly, that cicada spent years underground as a nymph, feeding on sap from plant roots.”
Plays on the road 2.7 km from Makarora Country Cafe and Camp in the Parkwolf Mount Aspiring Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
Makarora Country Cafe and Camp is a roadside café, campground and fuel stop in Makarora, on the drive between Wānaka and the West Coast. With limited food and petrol options around the township, it is a useful place to stop for coffee or a meal before carrying on over Haast Pass. There is also a view across the valley from the stop.
The café advertises coffee, food and dessert, but there is no dependable menu or standout dish to plan around. Its toilets are for café customers. The adjoining campground has powered and unpowered sites, a shared kitchenette, showers and toilets, laundry and Wi-Fi. Check the current site arrangements with the operator if you are planning an overnight stay.
Blue Pools car park is about 10 km beyond Makarora, roughly a ten-minute drive from the township. That makes this a convenient break on the way to a short walk or the longer Haast Pass drive. Fuel pumps are on site, though current fuel availability is unclear, so confirm before relying on them.
Wildlife
60 sightingsKeaMost seen around 5 PMSighting map
112 sightingsRockwrenMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
26 sightingsYellowheadMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
13 sightingsTūīMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
27 sightingsBellbirdMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
35 sightingsRiflemanMost seen around 8 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Mount Aspiring. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Keep exploring
ChallengingWilkin Valley Track to Kerin Forks Hut15 km · 4.5 hr · At the trailheadRiver flats and a remote hut, with two serious crossings.
EasyMakarora Bush Walk0.7 km · 15 min · 4.7 km awayA quick forest loop with a glimpse of old timber milling.
ChallengingMount Shrimpton Track6 km · 5 hr · 4.7 km awayA steep forest climb to the McKerrow Range bushline.
ChallengingGillespie Pass Circuit56 km · 22 hr · 7.7 km awayA wild alpine pass links the Young, Siberia and Wilkin valleys.Parkwolf’s Mount Aspiring ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
