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After doing a couple of walks on the way to Greymouth, one to a seal colony and one at the pancake rocks and blow holes (Punakaiki). These are where the sea has eroded holes in the shore line rocks and with rougher sea's, water is forced out through the middle of them, like the blow hole on a whale, not that we saw this happen. We also drove along New Zealand's answer to the great ocean road in Australia. A beautiful stretch of road which, understandably runs along the west coast of New Zealand, giving some stunning views. The best of the bunch was probably stopping at the Iramahuwhero viewpoint, which looked back across the road we had just travelled.
On the way to the town we were told it was a small mining town, which was were the fairly recent mining disaster happend at the start of the year ?, where there was an explosion in one of the local mines and around 20 odd miners sadly died.
Greymouth itself is not a over night stop for the Kiwi Bus but instead an optional hop off, which with our time frame in New Zealand, we decided to take.
Greymouth was exactly as described, a small mining town, which only exsits because of the mining opportunities in the area, but it seemed nice enough on first impression, it wasn't anwhere near as good looking as say Taupo or River Valley but nicer than Westport.
Our hostel was Noah's Ark and as the name suggests had a strong theme, based on a large boat and 2 types of each animal, after a 10 minute walk, in the lovley sunshine (which seems to be quite rare in New Zealand) we arrived and checked in. We had booked a double room for three nights, with our room being the 'Zebra' room. The pictures will show the decoration of the room but I assume you can guess without seeing them, what the decor was like. The hostel is an old monestary and basically one big converted house, which had a nice lounge, complete with table, chairs, sofa's and another fire, they seem to love them out here. With all this it had a nice home like feel to it, rather than a chain hostel.
We didn't do anything major in the evening, with the highlight being me preventing a certain road traffic accident, even if I do say so myself, which I do. I will explain very briefly. I had walked to the shop and on the way back noticed a group of little 'oiks' on a path, at the top of a hill, which led right down to a main road. The path was blind to the road and when I noticed one of these delightful members of society push a shopping trolley down this hill, directly into the path of the road and an on coming car, I had to have a little jog and prevent it from rolling into the road. Trolley and car saved, I then recieved some kind of abuse from these little idiots, I couldn't tell you what they shouted at me as I had my headphones in, although I can tell you it wasn't "thank you for stopping our trolley!"
On the second day we both treated ourselves to a bit of a lie in, "because you have been working really hard!?" I hear you cry, and no, but as we had moved around alot lately it was nice to get up in our own time and not have to worry about checking out and packing our bags, ready to move on.
After lounging around for some of the morning we then decided to go and have a proper look around town, in the half decent weather that had graced us, even if it was a bit grey. We had chosen a short walk to do, one called the Floodwall walk. It ran along the bank of the river which Greymouth sits next to and heads down to the old industrial shipping docks. Were not too sure if we personally would have highlighted this 'walk' in a town guide, or recommend others to do it, but it was a nice bit of fresh air and exercise, so it we couldn't loose.
It was lucky that we had made the most of the half decent weather the previous day as our last day in Greymouth was, what is becoming typical weather for New Zealand, wet. Luckily for us we had been given a couple of free internet vouchers when we had chekced in, which came in very handy. We rattled through some travel based bits like visa's for the US and booking our next lot of accommodation etc.
It really did rain near enough all day so there isn't much else to write for our third and last day in Greymouth, apart from eating dinner and watching a film in the evening. Day three, done.
The next day we had to pack up our backpacks and then head back down to the bus stop ready to be once again, picked up by the big green bus. It was a shame to spend our last day in Greymouth couped up in the hostel for much of the day but at least we had been out and seen some bits of town on our second. We both really enjoyed the home comforts of the hostel and were both a little bit sad to leave, this small, but pretty nice town.
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