Drove down to Wellington on Saturday the 7th of January to catch ferry to the South Island.Spent a few hours wandering Wellington, then waited in the car as our ferry was not until 2:30am.Managed to get about 2 hours sleep in the car before getting on ferry, but didn't get any sleep on the ferry as they were showing films so I watched The Easter Bunny and Kunfu Panda 2.We finally got into Picton at 6am, just as it was getting light.We started to drive down the east coast, after we travelled a few miles it began to get very windy.We got as far as Kiaoria and decided to stop there as it looked as though it was going to start raining.

We just managed to get our tent up before it started raining around 2pm, we went in the tent to sleep around 10pm and it was still raining really heavy.Thankfully it had stopped raining by the morning, so we packed up the tent while it was dry and decided to head west across Lewis path towards Westport.

On the way to Westport we stopped in a little town called Hamner where we have now been for the last 2 days.Just enjoyed the sunshine the first day then yesterday (10/1/12) we did a walk nearby to the top of Mount Isabel.It was a really steep climb to the top and it was quite hot with the sun.When we finally got to the top about 3 hours later we decided to go down a different way as the sign at the top stated that the other route down was on 3km and estimated only 1 hour 15 min to complete.It did not mention that when you got down the 3km mountain you still had to walk another 6km back to the road.Don't know how far in total we walked but by the time we got back it had took us almost 6 hours.

Wednesday we decided to just enjoy the sun and just relax at the campsite after going on a short walk to the town.This did not go to plan as as the day went on we discovered we had been bitten by sandflies while on the walk the previous day and they were now starting to itch.You wouldn't such a little thing could cause such irritation.Dai has got more bites than me, he easily has more than 20 on both his arms and legs, I don't have so many but some of mine are worse than others and I now have a swollen finger on my left hand, the back of my right hand is swollen as is my right ankle.We are now covered in DEET but the things are still biting us.

Left Hamner on Thursday to escape sandflies, we headed further west towards Westport. The drive across Lewis path was good, I do like these twisty New Zealand roads, it seems that sometimes they put the bends in just because they could.When we got to Westport it had started raining again and the guy at the campsite where we were going to stay advised they were expecting more rain and gale force winds in the night so we carried on down the coast to Greymouth, where they had only forecast rain, at least the rain is keeping the sandflies away.

May stay in Greymouth again tomorrow or head back east across Authors Pass to Christchurch, will check the weather forecast in the morning