We made it to the South Island! But before I detail our experiences down here, I thought I'd summarize our time in Wellington... On our first day we went on a Wellington/LOTR tour led by an actor who works at the hostel we were staying and was in Avatar for a whole 6 seconds! He took us to Weta Caves and for a peek at Peter Jackson's street (he owns so many houses in a row it's ridiculous), and to look at the famous pre- and post-production studios and absolutely huge sound stages. All very interesting! Our second day in Wellington was spent in Te Papa museum, which was really good - 6 floors of museum takes a lot of time to get through, but we got to know a lot about the geographical and cultural history of New Zealand.

Despite the North being rather sunny when we departed, and not being able to spot a single cloud throughout the crossing over the Cook Straight, it got progressively cloudy as we travelled from Picton to Nelson and was decidely grey when we arrived at the hostel. The next day was equally grey and threatened rain constantly, so our planned outdoors activities were cancelled in favour of a wander around town which led to an afternoon in the cinema watching Robin Hood (entertaining, but about as historically inaccurate as possible). Leaving the cinema around 4, it felt much later (cinemas always do that to me) so the rest of the day was spent eating the free soup at the hostel, and reading. How exciting! Today was a long bus ride down to Greymouth, and again it is raining and rather chilly! But the scenery along the way was quite spectacular, and we stopped off at the famous Pancakes Rocks and spotted a seal colony lazing around. First impressions of Greymouth aren't too exciting, and we are off tomorrow morning for Franz Josef where (weather permitting) we will be attempting a spot of glacier hiking!