The west coast of NZ's South Island

From Nelson it is a long trip to the next major settlement on the west coast: Greymouth. The plan was to have just one night there and move on to FranzJosef the following day. This necessitated a lot of traveling. We spent almost the whole day on the bus taking occasional photo stops and toilet breaks. The weather wasn't the best so it was a poor enough day for sightseeing. Still I was able to appreciate the stark, rugged beauty coastline of the west coast of NZ with the mountains on one side and the Tazman Sea on the other. The first stop of interest was to see a seal colony. I thought we would be walking along a beach amongst them but we simply looked down from the top of a cliff at them. If they weren't moving about you might not even notice they were there as they blend in quite well to the rocks they are sitting on. There were plenty of pups flopping around the place which was kind of cute but the weather meant we didn't hang around for long. There was a pretty cool signpost though that pointed to the major cities of the world and gave the distances from that point to them. Dublin didn't feature but Westport did (the NZ one)! Later in the day we had another stop at a landmark known as the 'Pancake Rocks'. They are so called because they have formed in layers like a stack of pancakes. They are some kind of geological anomaly and were interesting enough but I was more interested in the blowholes; holes in the rock above a cave where waves crash in and spout from the blowhole. After that we had another quick stop at a lookout that had a waterfall on the beach and we were pretty much in Greymouth.

Most of us on the bus had signed up to the activity here in Greymouth offered by the Magic Bus: a brewery tour. We got a deal on a tour and tasting followed by a meal in a bar of our choice. The brewery tour was quite interesting, it was a lot smaller than the one I had visited in Brisbane but there was a more personal touch to the brewery process because of that. The highlight of the tour was undoubtedly the tasting at the end. We got to taste 7 different brews from cider to pilsner to ale and afterwards had the opportunity to pour a glass (or two) of your favourite. One of our group proved themselves to be a lightweight here as they got smashed off the tasting. Who? A Brazilian guy named Cicero. He provided the entertainment for the evening as we drank more in the bar later. We got ferried to said bar in a taxi and had our pub grub and a few more bevvies. It was a good night and a great way to end a long day traveling. We didn't get to see much of Greymouth as a result but by all accounts I wasn't missing much. We had an early start the next day but a relatively short trip to the town of FranzJosef, home of the FranzJosef glacier on which I would be hiking for a full day!