The worst of the storm had passed so we were free to leave Greymouth and head to Westport where we were going to stay with our friend Jessie who was working at one of the mines there, and it's a good thing too because the tent was still saturated and we needed to get it dry, and as mentioned before a bed is always welcome.

On the way to Westport we stopped off at the Pancake rocks which aren't really anything special just huge rocks coming out of the sea with loads of layers, there's not a lot to see from Greymouth to Westport so it's worth stopping for a quick look. There's also blowholes too but high tide wasn't due until 6pm that afternoon and we didn't want to stick around for 9 hours just to see that so had a gander at the rocks then drove to a walking track that I had been told about called Truman's Track it's only short but takes you through rainforest down to a beach with a waterfall from the cliffs, this was quite a nice stroll to have and the weather was pretty good too.

Westport was pretty dull too nothing much to the place, it's mainly a mining town and if you didn't have a car a planned to stop here on your travelsyou'd be really quite disappointed.There appeared to be very little to do. Our friend Jessie lived about 20 mins outside of Westportin accommodation provided by his employer, we were expecting quite an old worn down house but were amazed that it was a new build, with air con, sky, nice kitchen a place that I would be more than happy to live in permanently although not in Westport!

We spent a few days here completely abusing the washing machine, cooking nice dinners and letting the tents dry. There was an agricultural show on one day so we went in to town to see what that was about. There's not a lot of people in Westport, well, there's not a lot of people in New Zealand full stop so when we thought it would be quite big and huge crowds we really should have known better. There was a small fair consisting of carousel and big wheel, some games stalls, a few tractors, 4X4 cars which we did like having a look at, men playing bagpipes - strange, dog show, a few general farming stalls with their produce, lumber jack competition and the most strange thing of all that would never be expected at an agricultural show - Karaoke!!!

It took us all of 30 mins to get round the whole lot and steer clear of the bagpipes, we spent a while watching the lumber jacks chop their bits of wood then decided enough was enough. Another thing was that we all got in on a family ticket which was described as 2 adults and a child so not quite sure who they thought the child was - Steve has been told he looks younger than he is, but under 16!! Now that's just plain stupid or the kids in Wesport look a lot older than they really are.