Day 19 - Shantytown, and Ecoworld at Hokitika

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After a quick visit to the tourist information center at Greymouth we headed off to a "town" called Shantytown. Shantytown is an old gold mining town, recreated and relocated from original buildings and machinery, in an old gold mining area. Its basically like Beamish in the UK. It was interesting to see how people worked and lived during the manic gold-rush period in New Zealand. The highlight of the day: Goldpanning! Phil and Shell managed to find flakes of gold after panning for what seemed like ages; the only trouble is that its not enough to make us rich (and extend our travelling even longer).

In the afternoon we drove to another coastal town called Hokitika where we visited Eco World. We finally got to see some Kiwi's which are suprisingly big and were being bred as part of NZ's conservation program as the are particulary rare. We also saw Tuatara (ancient lizard-like animals; basically dinosaurs) and NZ's giant eels about 200 years old. The eels are are good couple of meters long and we helped to feed them.

Late afternoon we drove up to Fox Glacier (and Franz Josef Glacier) for our heli-hike and ice climbing trips over the next couple of days.

Internet Links...
Shanytown

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