We were delighted to leave Greymouth this morning, though given the choice we might have opted for a bit of a lie in - I look like I've been punched, the rings around my eyes are so bad. Nevertheless, we were back on the bus at 8am and heading south...

First up was Hokitika, the home of greenstone production in New Zealand. We had a break there for half an hour or so, where I spent approximately three minutes looking in the greenstone factory before going to drink tea at a cafe (Jim didn't even make it into the factory, heading straight for the tea). We carried on from there, bound for Ross. Unfortunately, en route the bus lost all power and we broke down in the middle of a road, sufficiently far enough away for the driver to have lost all reception on his mobile phone.

After flagging down an elderly couple and sending them to call for help, the driver was confronted by a group of policemen on motorbikes (looking eerily similar, all with handlebar moustaches as if they'd all turned up to a fancy dress party as the same member of the Village People by mistake) asking us to move the bus out of the road. So, Jim and I did our best 'World's Strongest Man' impressions and helped push the bus into a layby. Fortunately, one of the other passengers is a mechanic in the real world and he managed to get the bus started and us back on our way.

We broke down a couple more times, meaning that we were running behind time and could only stop for five minutes in Ross before carrying on towards Franz Josef. The scenery started to get really beautiful as we entered the Westland Tai Poutini National Park, all soaring mountains and mirrored glacier lakes. And by the time we arrived at our destination the sun had even come out to make everything seem even better!

Franz Josef is only a tiny village and its star attraction is the glacier which we will be hiking on tomorrow (it's one of only three in the Southern Hemisphere that you can walk on). So for the remainder of this afternoon I went out for a short walk through the rainforest to look out at the mountains and glacier, whilst Jim got some sleep.

Love you all,

x x x