We got up early again this morning and got going on the road. Todays aim is to get quite a bit of driving done north wards. Our first stop was through Ross which was a little gold mining town in the past. The largest gold nugget was mined from here. We only stopped for a little while but it was like being in the wild west. They had the old jail still standing which was pretty much a small porta cabin size with two rooms, the jail and then the room the policeman sat in. There was some old mining equipment in town too. It was cool for a look around, we moved onto Hokitika next though. We stopped to have some lunch in the van on the sea front and had a drive through the town. We saw all of the shops selling Jade, that's what they are famous for here now after the gold rush they moved onto Jade. From here we drove quite a way to Punakaki Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. This place was a 20 minute round walk through some bushes with pathways out to see the scattered rock on the sea front. They are called pancake rocks because they are huge layered rocks. There were a few large blowholes between the rocks which were cool to watch, plus you could see the rain which had just started out at sea through the clouds from here. We had hung around a little too long though because it had started to rain on us. We quickly looked at the rest of it which was pretty cool too and made a dash back to the van. The rain came down quite hard on the next portion of the drive plus we were driving in and out of low cloud. James said the drive was stunning on this section, and I have to agree, the river we're following is slow moving and the mountains stand out of the clouds. We drove until around 6.00pm where we found a pull in next to the river on one side and the road on the other. James had done a lot of driving today so we will stay here tonight and start again in the morning. We're hoping to get to Picton tomorrow and then get the ferry on 11th to north island.