After leaving Dunedin we headed north along the coast with a stop to see the Moeraki rocks (perfectly spherical metre wide rocks formed by by debris accumulating around a pearl) and the town of Oamaru (for a cheese platter direct from the factory) before heading inland through some stunning glacial scenery to Lake Tepako. The lake is incredibly blue due to a fine sediment in the water which refracts the sunlight and it's a beautiful spot. After polishing off the remaining crackers and cheese we donned our swimming costumes and headed to the local thermal spa. There were 3 outdoor pools of varying temperature with the hottest at 40 degrees and we sat and watched the sunset over the lake and stargazed for a few hours before returning to our cabin. The next morning we set off on a walk up Mount John for a birds eye view of the lake and surrounding snow capped mountain ranges, a wrong turn meant the proposed 1 hour walk accidentally ended up in a 3 hour slog. We timed our walk perfectly ending up back at the spa just as it opened and both got in for a fiver as we had been the night before! We had another good soak along with a few dips in the freezing plunge pool and then headed off towards Christchurch with a brief stop at the historic town of Geraldine for some lunch.
We arrived in Christchurch mid afternoon and met with Osian, Gwenno's school friend that had offered to let us stay at his flat. He made us a tasty chicken dinner and we headed out for some drinks in a new 'pop up' bar in a former car garage- a quirky consequence of the recent earthquakes. We explored Christchurch the next morning which was a bit odd as our Lonely Planet guidebook pre-dated the earthquakes and most of the sights it includes are no longer standing or out of bounds. We did however have a nice walk through the botanical gardens and a temporary shopping street made up of colourful stacked shipping containers. It was really sad to see the red zone and the devastation in the city with the centre completely abandoned. We said goodbye to Osian and continued our journey up over Arthur's Pass and back to the West coast. It was another really scenic winding drive with plenty of amazing views of the mountains before we descended back down to Greymouth on the west coast. We found a reasonable hostel with a nautical theme and set up for the next two nights. It was fairly busy and there were plenty of people travelling the opposite way to us to tap for advice! Our favourite was probably a Danish man that spent his evenings cooking up a deer that he had shot two days earlier! He had also topped off 40 goats in the north island the week before!
The next morning we set off to do the activity that we had come to Greymouth for- hand forging our own knives (Ben's choice of activity!). We had a really good day which started with us heating our large bar of carbon steel in a fire followed by hammering the life out of it in an anvil. We then cut the steel down to size, fitted a brass collar and sawed some wooden handles, then attaching them with brass pegs. We had to do quite a lot of sanding before lunch then we got to take the resident miniature ponies for a walk and have a go on their giant swing which involved 1 person sitting on the swing and 5 people pulling them backwards as high as they could! We returned after this to do more sanding and polishing before our knives were finally finished! We are both really proud of the newest addition to our kitchen and look forward to using them soon! Ben also managed to hone his axe and ninja star throwing abilities during the breaks which was an extra bonus. We returned to Greymouth for our final night in the hostel and left quite early the next morning for a long journey back over the Alps with two Danish guys we had met in the hostel which were trying to hitch north (don't worry they were normal enough plus we had just made our own knives!!). The road along the coast north of Greymouth has been voted one of the 10 best drives in the world and it was a great drive hampered only by the terrible cornering of the Mazda 3 combined with the extra weight of the Danish and their rucksacks! Nevertheless we carried on stopping at 'Pancake Rocks' for a quick walk and Murchinsin for lunch. We dropped our friends off in Motueka and continued up through Takaka to a little Eco hostel in Golden Bay. We had come here as we had heard really good things about the nearby 'Mussel Inn' and wanted to sample the food and though the cabin was a little more basic than we had expected (pit toilets and no hearing in the room) it did have an amazing view of Farewell Spit and the Golden Bay so we couldn't really complain! We walked to the Mussel Inn for dinner along a dirt track and had a really incredible view of the stars; we could clearly see The Milky Way across the sky and thousands more stars than usual which was amazing. The Dinner was also great as we had plenty of fresh mussels and home brewed beer and cider to wash it down.
Though we thought that there were quite a few flaws in the Eco Cabins (the main one being that they only seemed to chose the Eco option if it would save them money!) it had an amazing view in the morning from the verandah so we sat out and read for a few hours before setting off for the day. Our first stop was at the Te Waikoropupu Springs where some 14 cubic metres of water rises from the ground per second. The spring is reputed to have the clearest water of any other spring in the world and is of great importance to the Maori people. It's a really peaceful spot to wander around. We jumped back into the car and headed to the Labyrinth Rocks Park which is basically a naturally former maze between huge limestone rocks. There are lots of little figures/ children's toys dotted around the park and it's quite dark in the caverns which gives it quite an eerie feel. We continued onto the Grove, which is similar to the Pancake rocks that we had seen but inland rather than out to sea. After having a bit of an explore we returned over the winding Takaka hill to The Resurgence; another important Maori site where a huge clear river emerges from under the mountain. Our final stop for the day was at Split Apple beach to have a look at more caves and funny rock formations before driving over to Marahau which is near the entrance to the Abel Tasmin National Park.
We spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on a bit of reading and sitting in the sun which made a nice change as we haven't really relaxed in the past few weeks with all the sight seeing and driving around! The following morning over breakfast we spotted our friends from home Jimmy and Heather who unknown to us had also spent a night at the same campsite. It was nice to catch up but very brief as they were going kayaking and we were heading off walking. After packing up the car we set off on a long walk through Abel Tasmin National Park along a winding coastal track through pine forests and had sandwiches on the beautiful Anchorage Bay. Our legs a little tired after the 14 miles trek we then headed to Nelson which was our next stop. We had pencilled this town in a while back as we heard it had a good curry house as we have been missing spicy food. A banquet for two later we were stuffed to the brim, so headed back to the room to rest our tired legs.
We got up early planning to drive through Malborough Sounds and do a full day of walking but after driving along the windy roads to the Sound Ben was feeling a little sick ( nothing to do with Gwenno's driving mind!) So we headed straight to Picton instead and checked into our hostel with an afternoon of reading on the sunny verandah. This was our last night on the south island and the next morning we returned our Mazda and caught the ferry sailing through the Malborough Sounds in its way to the north island.