SAD!

I'm sad. When I was coming up from Queenstown, I had to pull out my "Northern and Central South Island" map, which I used when I got to the south island originally, and put away my "Southern South Island" map. I got hit with a pang of sadness at that point, because I knew that was the beginning of the end. I have no more "new" maps to break open, just old crappy maps I've used already, so the end is nearing.

Today (actually last evening), I got sad feelins because I'm leaving the mountains behind, and anyone who knows me, knows I *LOVE* the mountains. Everything here in NZ is drawing to a close, and it sucks. And I realized I've pretty much done everything I wanted to do in NZ (in fact, everything I wanted to do on the whole trip!) I have a couple of "left over" things to do on the north island, but nothing grand to look forward to.

Anyway, today I got up about 8:00, showered, had breakfast. Cold in my room last night, my watch registered only 121 degrees when I woke up.

Packed my car, checked out and called Rosemary about 9:10, and went to her place for morning tea, met Andy, looked at my glacier trip pictures on their TV, chatted, took pictures and left about 10:30.

Drove up through Hokitika, drove through the townsite, stopped at the glowworm dell, but can't see anything during the day. Continued on to Ross, an old gold-mining town that still has a gold mining operation. Went to the visitors information centre and did the Water Race Walk, a one hour walk along an old water race, used by gold miners of 140 years ago. Interesting history.

Continued on to Shantytown, got there about 2:30. Shantytown is a historic re-creation of an old goldrush town. You can even dig and pan for gold in the river for yourself (and keep any gold you get). Had lunch at the cafe in Shantytown, the most amazing nachos I have ever had. Left about 3:45.

Got to Greymouth and checked into Neptune's, a nice hostel in an old historic building (has historic designation). Missed the daily tour of Monteith's Brewing Company brewery, so I'll have to catch it tomorrow.

When I checked in, Kat (lady who owns/runs the place with her husband) told me of the Railway Hotel, which has an all you can eat BBQ with sausages and salad and bread for $3. Or get a steak also for $8. Cheap, too bad I filled my face at Shantytown!

Walked around downtown a bit, but it was flipping cold, so I went back to my car and drove to Monteith's to get tour time info for the weekends (11:30 and 2:00), then to supermarket, back to hostel. Had cereal for supper, then tried to use the internet at the hostel, but it's crap (I hate coin operated internet machines...the stupid CTRL key was disables, so when I went to copy my journal to the clipboard, it deleted it all and replaced it with a c!). I got frustrated and decided to do my journal update tomorrow morning before the brewery tour. Then I sat in the spa pool for more than an hour, it was soooo relaxing, the hot water and the cool air. I still feel like that beef and bean nacho's thing wants to come back up...not sick, but really bloated over it!

I'm not sad anymore, I realized there's more to NZ than mountains, I really enjoyed the Shantytown, and am looking forward to doing caving and want to white-water rafting, maybe in the next town.

To bed about 10:30.