West Coast Sprint

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Having spent the night at a YHA in Wanaka, we embarked upon the ten hour trip that would take us up the westcoast to the port town of Greymouth. We had originally planned to stop off at one of the Glaciers en route, but that would have taken an extra day or two, and we were already pretty strapped for time.

The journey was again pretty scenic, it was interesting to watch the changing landscapes fly past. Greymouth, as the name perhaps hints, is an almost ghostly industrial sea-side town... it had a very sleepy frontier feel to it. We found an all you can eat BBQ for some dinner, and went down to the sea in the evening. The original plan had been to swim, but the combination of cold, extreme surf, dark and the prospect of industrial waste from the town conspired against us!

The next day we took a bus up towards Abel Tasman national park- this was to be our final 'south island destination', right at the top of the island. We passed through Nelson and a couple other prominent places, including a couple of bus changes, and an intense visitors centre session- at which we planned and purchased our entire journey back to Auckland, what a mission! Finally we arrived at Marahau the gateway to Abel Tasman.

It was strange to have spent pretty much two days solid sat on busses, rather than stopping and exploring as we had been doing... but I suppose getting to University on time was moderately important.

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