26th - 29th Nov - South Island New Zealand

We left Wellington taking the boat across the sound between North and South Island. The day before the weather had been pretty awful and we were a bit worried about the 3 hour crossing. Thankfully it was dead calm and no sea sickness anywhere. Our first stop was at Nelson a little town on the west coast. The hostel had a BBQ on so we eat and found a great reason for opening the bottle of wine we had bought at the winery tour in Auckland (yes we had carried a bottle of wine for days without opening it).

As there wasn't much to do in the town so everybody was doing the same as us, eating and drinking on the patio by the hostel pool. The hostels in NZ are really good, some are like fully blown hotels with cable TV, pools and all the facilities that you'd get in a hostel.

The second day we toured down to Greymouth stopping along the way to walk along the cliffs at the coast. Greymouth is famous for one thing beer - magic this bus really is as they've organised a tour of the brewery. We alight first at the hostel, Noahs Arc where all the rooms are kitted out in the theme of different aminals. As each guest, in front of us, was given the tiger room or the elephant room we were really excited about what we would get and stepped up for our animal. Pig, pig is what she said, pig I said, can you not give us old cow or something - the room was pink, totally pink, the bed covers the walls everything pink with paintings of pigs on the walls. Cute if you're a 6 year old girl - I just hope we don't have hangovers tomorrow.

The brewery tour started with a wander around the brewery showing us how they make the beers. Then we were taken into the tasting room, kitted out like a bar and sampled all of the 7 varieties Montieths have. We didn't like only 2 the guinessy one which tasted like burnt beer and the lime one which was like a lime shandy - waste of beer. We were then allowed to sample a half pint of our favourite. We both had the Celtic Red which was a really nice tasting reddish (as in the name) lager. We were then taken to a local pub for BBQ and more drinks. Your first was free (if on the tour) then you got a 1/3 larger pint for a dollar off for the rest of the night - bargain all round. The BBQ was a little basic and I asked for the veggie option to be told it was extra. I asked how could the veggie option be extra, to be told I could have as much sausage a I wanted with the veggie option. The logic was totally lost on the stupid girl and I had to pay an extra few dollars to get a tasteless veggie burger. I made up for it by having as many cheap beers as I could manage - that'll show them.