West Coast and Greymouth

On to the West Coast next; stopping to see a seal colony where we saw our first glimpses of Mount Cook in the distance (New Zealand's highest peak) and on through Paparoa National Park to see the pancake rocks (layered like pancakes) at Punakaki before stopping off the beaten track in a town called Greymouth. It's the west coast's largest town with 10,000 people! Maidenhead in the UK has about 60,000 people. There are 4 million people living in New Zealand with 3 million of them living in Auckland city on the North Island so it's only a tiny proportion that live on the south Island...very quiet then.

But Greymouth was a sweet place, and the hostel we stayed at was even better than Nelson: made-up beds, sea themed rooms, hot water bottles, bubble baths and FREE iced buns from the local bakery at the end of the day! Fantastic! Free stuff from hostels has definitely become a detrimental part to how we decide which to stay in! In Greymouth there were more pretty coastal walks to do alongside huge crashing waves (that made a rumbling sound which I mistook for an Earthquake but I didn't panic...much). Plus the hostel manager, Steve, showed us a scary cave (Cobden Cave) to explore but me and Jen had seen the film, "Descent" way too many times and so didn't take us long to get scared of the dark and came running back up again - especially as all I had with me was my wind-up torch when I should have had a huge, blindingly bright, industrial-type torch...and flares! We consoled ourselves after that with an "all-you-could-eat" BBQ for $5 (2GBP) which I did terribly at as I filled up on pasta...damn filling pasta!