The Abel Tasman national park area of the south island is supposed to be a very picturesque place. Actually, the whole of the south island is supposed to be picturesque so I suppose that our real reason for going to Abel Tasman was because we could. Armed with a half full tank of petrol and some sandwiches, we set off up there. The day was as brilliantly sunny as the previous one had been and so we were in for a good day. The road over the mountains offered plenty of great stopping points with splendid views. We skirted the park's west side for a while, heading towards Golden Bay until we found the road that would take us into the park. A few miles further on, we saw a great place to stop for lunch, over looking a large beach.

We were going to carry on up the road after lunch but it became unpaved slightly further on and we decided to walk on the beach for a while instead. One thing lead to another and a while turned into a couple of hours. We wandered around, looking at shells, absorbing the warm, sunny rays and disturbing a pair of very vocal ducks. When the ducks were quiet, it was easy to close your eyes and picture yourself practically anywhere. The only other noise (the tide was a long way out) was a barely audible aeroplane.

So we didn't quite make it very far into the Abel Tasman national park. We also didn't make it as far as Collingwood at the very top of the south island. After our long walk, we realised that we had to head south again and start making our way to Westport for the night. This was one of the two occasions when I have worried slightly about running out of fuel. In some of the more remote parts of New Zealand, it can be hard to come by and as we made our way back up over the mountains, the gauge was most definately in the red. Freshly refuelled on the other side, we headed for Westport on the west coast (of course). It was pretty dark when we got there and we had to ask for directions to our hostel.

We could have stayed in Westport and indulged in some white or black water rafting but we decided to try looking in Greymouth instead. Unfortunately though, it seems that you have to plan ahead for these things, even in low season. The next black water trip from Greymouth would have been the following day so we decided instead to continue south to Franz Josef. On the way, we stopped briefly in the town of Hokitika (or Hoki to the locals), the jade capital of New Zealand. For a jade capital, it seemed weird that it had only one big jade shop. The others seemed to sell the odd jade carving in addition to other things. There was one bizarre shop that appeared to be a John Wayne / western museum that also sold a couple of jade pendants. That sort of oddness reminds me of Shepton Mallet a bit. The shops there seem to specialise in selling two distinctly different types of product, like art and guns for example.

By this point in our journey south, the Southern Alps were looming quite large on the left side. For anyone who hasn't been here before or done much geography, the Southern Alps sit along the huge fault line that runs through New Zealand. The mountains were created by the meeting of the Australasian and Pacific plates of the Earth's crust colliding and pushing together. We climbed very slightly and eventually arrived at the tiny town of Franz Josef just as the sun was going down. The hostel we had chosen was simple but nicely furnished. Our room had its own mini kitchen and the hostel itself had a hot spa and served free hot soup every day at 6pm. Having sampled the soup, we took a short walk in the dark to see some glow worms. There were a few about but maybe it was too cold for them, it was certainly very cold for us!