Beautiful and secluded.

River is awesome to hang out at and theres a swimming hole further up the road near the new bridge

Reviewed 4 months ago

Very basic, but reasonable for the price ($10pp) and location.

Campsite is 6km off the highway on a mostly unsealed road riddled with potholes — give yourself time to drive it! (maybe 15-20 minutes)

Reviewed about 1 year ago

Great campsite, quite small so was almost full when we arrived at about 4pm during busy season.

One toilet, no taps - short walk to stream down below. No sandflies and overall a great stop for the night.

Reviewed almost 3 years ago

Hey fellow travelers.

My partner and I experienced a very scary thing last night while camping at the Puhi Puhi DOC campsite outside of Kaikoura and wanted to warn people about this. We were asleep in our tent and around midnight my boyfriend was woken up by a couple of men in a truck blaring rock music, honking, flashing their lights, and screaming curse words while speeding past the campsite. I'm a pretty deep sleeper so I didn't wake up. Then a little while later, the truck returned, put their lights on our tent and someone got out and jumped on our tent right next to our heads, which woke me up. I thought something had crashed into us. It was terrifying. Then the truck sped off. Some people may say that this was a joke, but there was no laughter. No noise. Just a blantant attack to scare the crap out of us. We had no idea what to do. We got in our car, locked the doors, tried calling 111 but there was no service and the main road was about 15 minutes away from the campsite. We made the decision to stay in the car and not leave since we had no idea who we were dealing with and it was better to stay at a site with a couple other campers then be by ourselves. We have been camping all over the South Island for over a month and never has anything like this happened before. It was traumatizing to feel that vunerable. It wasn't funny. It was completely out of order and whoever did this should honestly reevaluate their mental health. Please avoid this campsite cause who knows if they do this all the time. Stay safe and careful everybody! ❤️

Reviewed about 4 years ago

Julia’s review below is for a different camp ground.

Loved this site. Gorgeous setting and very tranquil

Reviewed about 5 years ago

Nice and quiet place to stay, away from everything.

The one toilet is ok and you can get water from the river down the camp.

Reviewed about 6 years ago

Beautiful and secluded.

River is awesome to hang out at and theres a swimming hole further up the road near the new bridge

Reviewed 4 months ago

Very basic, but reasonable for the price ($10pp) and location.

Campsite is 6km off the highway on a mostly unsealed road riddled with potholes — give yourself time to drive it! (maybe 15-20 minutes)

Reviewed about 1 year ago

Place is great!

Not alot of spots to set up tents but if you do manage to get a spot then your sorted. Short 10min track nearby and only a river as a water source. Would advise getting their before the evening to get a spot

Reviewed almost 3 years ago

Hey fellow travelers.

My partner and I experienced a very scary thing last night while camping at the Puhi Puhi DOC campsite outside of Kaikoura and wanted to warn people about this. We were asleep in our tent and around midnight my boyfriend was woken up by a couple of men in a truck blaring rock music, honking, flashing their lights, and screaming curse words while speeding past the campsite. I'm a pretty deep sleeper so I didn't wake up. Then a little while later, the truck returned, put their lights on our tent and someone got out and jumped on our tent right next to our heads, which woke me up. I thought something had crashed into us. It was terrifying. Then the truck sped off. Some people may say that this was a joke, but there was no laughter. No noise. Just a blantant attack to scare the crap out of us. We had no idea what to do. We got in our car, locked the doors, tried calling 111 but there was no service and the main road was about 15 minutes away from the campsite. We made the decision to stay in the car and not leave since we had no idea who we were dealing with and it was better to stay at a site with a couple other campers then be by ourselves. We have been camping all over the South Island for over a month and never has anything like this happened before. It was traumatizing to feel that vunerable. It wasn't funny. It was completely out of order and whoever did this should honestly reevaluate their mental health. Please avoid this campsite cause who knows if they do this all the time. Stay safe and careful everybody! ❤️

Reviewed about 4 years ago

Julia’s review below is for a different camp ground.

Loved this site. Gorgeous setting and very tranquil

Reviewed about 5 years ago

Nice and quiet place to stay, away from everything.

The one toilet is ok and you can get water from the river down the camp.

Reviewed about 6 years ago

First, the picture on the Rankers app seems to be of a different campsite.

This site is described as “grassy” both here and on the DOC website, but really it is just a gravel car park with a couple of patches of grass around it. There isn’t much of a view, and I really don’t think it’s worth driving up the gravel track for.

We stayed in late March. All of the other campsites we’d been at had been half empty, but this one was packed - people arriving late were turning round and leaving because there was no more space.

Overall, I don’t see any reason to pay the 8 dollars per adult to stay here.

Reviewed almost 7 years ago

Enjoyed my stay here, had a very peaceful afternoon with the place to myself.

Enjoyed the walk through the bush, and the river, where I had a swim. Place was very busy by nightfall, 10-15 lots of campers, and was still quiet; everyone very respectful. Would recommend. And suggest you take water for drinking as the water available is from the creek; fine for cooking and cleaning.

Reviewed almost 8 years ago

Basic DOC site.

$6pp. No water supply. Toilet was fine. Very pretty river nearby with low water level at the time. Relatively condensed site had 6ish vehicles that night. Bugs were almost non-existent. Perfectly pleasant but nothing special.

Reviewed over 9 years ago

Nice location although camp site can get very cramped due to it being quite small.

This ruined it a bit for us. No showers which was a shame seen as we still had to pay 12 dollars and the toilet wasnt very clean.

Reviewed about 12 years ago

There had been a big dump of rain so it was a bit wet on the ground.

Nice site, clean toilets, love the sound of the river all night. Be considerate & don't arrive late and wake everyone up!

Reviewed over 12 years ago