West Coast, New Zealand

The West Coast is the strip between the Southern Alps and the Tasman Sea and it is the wettest and most sparsely populated region in the country — six metres of rain a year in places, which produces a temperate rainforest that is genuinely ancient and a set of glacier-fed rivers that run grey with rock flour. Franz Josef and Fox are the two glaciers that come down almost to sea level and that anybody can walk on, both of them now retreating visibly and honestly; Punakaiki has the pancake rocks with the blowholes; Hokitika is the jade town where the greenstone carving is genuine; and Greymouth is the coal port with the history of a frontier that was extremely hard.

The region's character is tough, wet and genuinely independent — the coal and gold rushes built the towns and the mining culture still runs through them, the population is small enough to be counted in thousands, and locals describe the rain as a personality rather than a problem.

Expect real rainforest and glacier content, genuine frontier talk, and a region where the rain is measured in metres.

Nearby: Christchurch Canterbury Nelson Tasman