We decided to have a quiet day today to try and save some of our precious funds! We'd pretty much seen all there was of Hokitika yesterday so our plan was drive to a DOC site and spent the day lazing about in the van.

However, the first site we went to, which was on the site of and old gold mining town and looked very interesting, was closed for another week! The summer season's not quite here yet…

So we had to revert to Plan B and drive back through Hokitika to a site on Lake Mahināpua. This turned out quite well as this site had the luxury of real flushing toilets - not a stinking pit in sight! We pulled up and settled down for a lazy day with our books, magazines and chess set! Rock and roll! The only downside of this campsite was an evil black swan, obviously used to being fed by campers, who wouldn't leave us alone. It followed Laura as she came back from the toilets and tried to get the things out that we needed for lunch. It chased her around the van, quacking like crazy - she was terrified! She tried to get rid of it by throwing a cracker away from the van but it didn't seem interested. Evil swan aside, we had a nice day sheltering from the rain outside. And to top it off, we spent exactly $0 for only the second time in NZ!