It took us a few hours to drive to Nelson from the port, and we booked into a small, friendly and cosey hostel called 'the bug'. We don't know why but it had a volkswagon beetle bug theme! The day we arrived we didn't do much as it was late on in the evening so we got settled in, made use of free tea, coffee and internet ;)

The next day was probably the warmest day we have encountered in New Zealand, and it was deffo T shirt weather - or Vest for alex lol. Ben and Ryan decided to have a kick around on the playing fields just across the road from the hostel, whilst al and alex took advantage of the free bike hire. They didn't know where they were headed for, but after a steep uphill treck they came across a cool view of the beach. So they free wheeled in that direction soaking up the view. On the ride along side the beach, they spotted a police car drive past staring, and noticed that he had turned around :S they were stopping anyway to take some photo's, when the officer pulled over and headed their way! "Glad to see you boys are off your bikes now seeing as though you don't have any helmets. Shame it took a police officer driving past for you to do that!". Dodging a $55 fine, they had to walk the bikes back to the hostel. Meanwhile, Ryan and Ben had stopped playing footy and had gone into town for a wander. Ben decided it was time to have a mop chop and so they looked about town for somewhere...but one that had female stylists only :P. After this, as expected they ventured on to BK for a light lunch lol, and shortly after went back to the hostel to join up with Alex and Al.

That night it was Alex and Ryan's turn to cook tea. They had already conjoured up a meal plan and it was time to get this baby cookin'! After visiting our favourite supermarket - 'New World' - for the ingredients, and an hour or so of hard preparation the outcome was superb. Homemade meatballs in tomato sauce with spaghetti!! The best so far, obviously lol. To celebrate this meal of excellence we played scrabble long into the night ha ha with Ryan ending up as the scrabble champ.

The morning after, we took a drive out to the 'Abel Tasmen' National park which was a couple hours away from Nelson. There's loads of stuff to do there if you have the money, such as kayaking, aqua taxi etc.. or you could just take your time about the place as we did and go for an adventurous walk! This was mainly because it was off season, and so we had left it a bit late in the day to do what we were planning on. Nevertheless the day was fun and eventful..as always!

We were setting off the next day and were unsure of where to go next. Franz Josef was definately on the list but we wanted to break the journey up and hoped to see some other places along the way. Whilst in Nelson Ben and Alex met a few people on a night out. They were on the kiwi bus, which is like a pre-booked tour thing that takes you to the hot spots in New Zealand. One of the lads said they were heading to Westport after Nelson, and without knowing anything about this place, we assumed that there must be something there to do. We would later find out that this was a ghost town with nothing to do really! So the Kiwi bus must have used it just to break up an 8 hour trip to Franz Josef.

The day we left Westport for Franz Josef, was Ry dog's 19th Birthday! Ben had an idea the day before of getting all the ingredients for the fry up Ry had been craving for throughout the trip. As usual, Ryan was the first up, and was first to wish himself a happy birthday. He would then wake the others up for check-out (which would be in 30mins!). With Ryan in the shower, the others hurried in to the kitchen to try and get breakfast together. Mid way through preparation, he walked in on them lol. It was a sweet surprise though, as all we have eaten for breakfast since march 25th is toast with peanut butter or jam! This made a decent start to the day and we were then all ready to get down to Franz Josef and see the glaciers.