After a busy few days and still feeling the effects of our biking adventure we decided on our crossing from east to west we would spend and afternoon and night at Hanmer Springs. Hanmer Springs is a small tourist town built up around a luxury outdoor mineral spa. We thought an afternoon chilling out in some soothing mineral pools was just what the doctor ordered. We arrived around lunch time and the weather was fortunately sunny and as we were away from the coast it was actually pretty warm. We had some lunch in the park before heading to the Gold Rush mini golf as we are both suckers for it and love trying to beat each other at such a silly game! It was as usual a great laugh and we were the most competitive and loudest pair there. Unfortunately I have to report that yet again I was pipped at the post for the winning title by only 2 shots so I was raging at myself for losing, the teacher would say "could do better"! After my defeat at the gold rush it was off to the springs for some relaxation. We were pleasantly surprised by the size of the springs as it offered 9 different mineral pool with temperatures varying from a chilly 30° right up to a toasty 42° . We started at the 36° and worked our way up from there, spending most of our time in the 38° pool as the hotter ones were just too hot to sit in for any longer than a few minutes! The kid's are off at the moment for a 2 week holiday so unfortunately the pools were littered with loads of noisy, annoying and moaning children which we just had to do our best to ignore. After spending a couple of hours relaxing, unwinding our tired muscles and engaging in some top quality people watching (they just shouldn't make bikinis that big) we got changed and went for a walk around the small town. There were a few gift shops, clothes shops and plenty of cafes and restaurants however there was a pasta sauce in the van with our name on it so we had to try to resist the temptation to indulge. On returning to the van we checked into the campsite, had a quick look around and then read for a while before dinner. When it came to making dinner I realised that whilst there was a pasta sauce in the cupboard we were missing the vital ingredient to turn it into dinner….the pasta! We eat pasta all the time and at the last sitting I had forgotten to take note that we needed more! Ever the resourceful camper and budding Nigella Lawson I managed to rustle up a dinner of cheesy beano and chicken one minute noodles which for the purposes of this blog shall now be known as cheesy noodles, interesting and a good job Mike didn't marry me for my memory and organisational skills or my cooking abilities!! The next morning not surprisingly we woke up feeling pretty hungry and the thought of toast and marmalade again was just not hitting the spot. Whilst we really shouldn't have we decided to treat ourselves to a cooked breakfast with the works! In our defense however we did walk around every café in Hanmer to find the cheapest breakfast we could and washed it down with two glasses of tap water so we weren't all bad! After our satisfying start to the day we hit the road for the longest drive on the south island so far, 4 hours to Greymouth on the west coast.