After the day of rain yesterday we woke up to find the day looking a lot better. Greymouth seemed pretty average as far as things to do so we knew we had to move on. We thought we'd go in search of the better weather in the east as it was now a few days since sunshine (suppose it's better than the snow at home).
We had a really nice drive through the mountains with much better visibility than the previous day, stunning! Unfortunately another similarity to home is the weathers ability to change so quickly and soon it was raining again. With a break in the pouring rain we had soup for lunch on one of the many picnic spots by the side of the road.
Three town/villages later and 150km we decided to stop in Hanmer Springs two days ahead of schedule, we saw a nice looking DoC campsite about 40km out of the town and thought we'd stay there for a night but decided the dirt track would have taken us at least an hour and a half to get there so the town was the only realistic option. The site we found was ideal, a nice Dutch couple on the pitch next door, good weather and cheap bikes for hire.
Once set we went into the town and visited the hot water springs for a couple of hours.