On our journey to Greymouth, we spotted a sign for Lake Mahinapua so decided to investigate. This lake was another beautiful still lake that was surrounded by silence. As we stared into the glistening water I whispered to Sophie a challenge of pure skill. I called it the skimming challenge. Rule number 1 to the skimming challenge was to try and skim a stone to the users choice as many times as possible. Rule number 2 was "there are no other rules!" I stepped up first to show Sophie the art of skimming only to learn that I wasn't actually able to skim stones which was a massive error in my judgment! Sophie stepped up next and managed to skim a stone twice but after that was unable to skim anything! To save time we left it as beginners luck and continued our journey to the top 10 in Greymouth.

The next morning we awoke early and headed to the Shanty town. This is a small town that has been recreated to mirror a gold mining town from the gold rush era. Inside this town we saw many mechanical machinery used during the gold rush era and learned about the culture living in those times. Our favourite was china town! China town showed that the Chinese people got involved and played a big part in the success of the gold rush however it did seem that china town had the lower class houses and lower living standards. As we walked around, cut outs with voices of the locals living in Shanty Town would jump out on us and tell us their stories. We also enjoyed mucking around in the local toilets and jail :) pictures will be shown on our return. We were just in time to jump on the steam train which had been resorted in order to transport us around the town old school style. We finished off by watching a holographic movie about the progress of the town and the sad stories of the foul play due to the gold! After another educational morning it was time to hit the road and head to our next adventure!