I (we) were tempted to just write "it rained" for this entry which involved us bombing up the west coast from Fox Glacier as that is pretty much all it did as the weather forecast proved to be stunningly accurate.

However i'm sure something of interest happened so here goes. Well erm, the road was hilly, yes that's right and it made driving conditions tough what with all the rain and that.

Oh yeah, first stop along the road was Hotika which is the jade capital of New Zealand which is pretty impressive although i'm not sure that it has that many competitors for the title. We were there for an hour or so and in that time I reckon that it made my shortlist for the most in bred town we have visited in New Zealand, however Rhiannon bought herself a jade necklace and we also saw some glass blowing which was impressive. Rhiannon then felt sorry for a little glass penguin that was on the reduced counter becaude some of it's beak had broken off. So we bought that too.

Next stop was Shantytown which the brouchure assured us was a fully functioning gold mining type town from the 1850s and we were a bit disappointed to find out that it wasn't a real town and you had to pay to get in, but get in we did. It was alright, i'd say nothing to write home about but here I am writing away. It had old buildings and you could go gold panning. We took some amusing photos of us in the stocks and things and wandered around taking care to avoid the dummies and left.

Next stop was the pancake rocks and blow holes of Punakiki. Basically rocks that for some reason look like a stack of pancakes and some holes that water blows out of. A Dutch couple had earlier advised us to stop, take the photos and leave which is what we did.

Final stop was Westport were we stayed for the night huddled in the van listening to the rain batter down on us. However this was not before we had gone to see a fur seal colony and got absolutely soaked despite the macks being donned once more and to be honest I have to say that the seals didn't seem to appreciate us visiting them one little bit. Ungrateful gits, no wonder people harpoon them.

By the way neither of us actually agree with harpooning seals or anything else for that matter, except mosquitos which are scum, but you'd have a hard time killing one with a harpoon.