4th Dec: Catherine and I had to get up at 6:30am after only a few hours sleep. We then waited outside the hostel to be collected to do the southern loop of the south island. The bus was completely full so I sat next to Huw. Also on the bus was the Englis group that had got on our bus at Abel Tasman and also the lovely Scottish couple Johnny and Kalda who I met in Greymouth. We stopped at Bluff to pay for our Milford Sound Cruise trip that we were going on ...

We left early and did a scenic drive down to Greymouth. We stopped at Hawks Crag where we found a seal colony - they are very inactive mammals! - and there was also a sign with the various distances of world cities which Mia and I pretended to pole dance round for a photo. We then stopped off at Punakaiki for its famous blowholes and Pancake rocks in Papapoa National Park which was really impressive. We arrived at Greymouth and checked into a backpacker hostel...

It was a real struggle getting up in the morning as we had to be collected to go to the ferry at 6:45am. We had to wait quite a while in the ferry terminal which was annoying as I kept thinking that I could be sleeping! We eventually got going about 8am and I was surprised at the size of the ferry and the fact that it would take 3.5 hours to get from the north island to the south as I didn't think it would be that far. On the ferry there was a cinema so we settle...