I've decided to write about these few places together because I don't have too much to say about each one since we were only in each place for a night and therefore each blogpost is really short at the moment. We are travelling around by hop on hop off buses which make travelling and organisation much easier, but we do also seem to be spending a lot of time just on the bus travelling or in places where we aren't really doing anything sadly. The travelling around isn't so bad because it has to be done obviously and the views are really beautiful, its just a shame its our main activity at the moment. Soon we will be spending more than one night in a few places though which will definitely help and make things a bit less rushed and we can actually get to know the places a bit better.
Starting off with Kaiteriteri. The ferry over from Wellington took about 3 hours and was really pretty in parts but mainly just a ferryride to be honest. Kaiteriteri is about 20km outside of the Abel Tasman national park and is bordered by a beach which is really pretty and is voted one of the top 100 beaches in the world. We stayed in a hostel called Kaiteri Lodge and our room smelt like cheese and ham but other than that it was fine. We had a wander down the beach and then spent the evening watching Ace Ventura and hanging out with people from our bus.
In the morning we got a sea taxi to see a seal colony and their cubs (so cute) and then got dropped off in the national park to do a walk for a couple of hours. It was really beautiful and definitely worth the early morning.
After that we headed off down to Westport, stopping off at the beautiful Lake Nelson which was gorgeous for sure but also full of eels which were disgusting. People were feeding them and they were popping their horrible little heads out of the water. Not nice. Some people went for a little swim but after I saw those eels (and dipped a toe in the water) there was no way I was going in.
We arrived into westport in the late afternoon, went to the supermarket to get some dinner and then settled into our hostel for the evening - Bazil's. Westport itself seemed a bit dead to me, like a ghost town. When we went to the supermarket there was no one around, no cars or anything. All a bit spooky. Our hostel for the night was really cool though and there was loads of us in one room that had its own kitchen and TV so we watched a film and had a laugh.
The next day we headed off to Lake Mahinapua. We stopped off for an early walk along the coast, seeing some more seals closer up this time. I love seals, they're pretty high up in my top animals I think along with Koalas and Sloths of course.
We arrived into Lake Mahinapua at about 2pm but before that we stopped in a town called Greymouth to prepare for the evening. The place we stayed is a Kiwi Experience exclusive and plays host to the Kiwi Experience fancy dress party. The hostel was nice enough, comfy beds and included a roast pork buffet dinner and breakfast so you can't really complain. The theme for the fancy dress was that you come as something that starts with the first letter of your name. So I went as the Mona Lisa (I bought a big frame and some brown clothes), Kate came as a Kite (she bought a kite and wore all black), Amy came as Alan from the film Hangover (she bought a baby and drew herself a nice beard), Becki came as Bruce Bogtrotter from the film Matilda (stuffed a pillow up her top and smothered cake all over her face: both brilliant and disgusting) and our newest member of the gang Juliet (a really lovely girl from Oxford) came as Jeremy Clarkson.
We had a really good night and the morning began with buffet pancakes and bacon. Brilliant!
We headed off to Frans Josef after breakfast, stopping only once at a cafe and arriving into town at about lunchtime.
