Greymouth

So for the next 2 nights we stayed at the Neptune in Greymouth, an old hotel turned now into a backpackers. It's a small enough town with not much going on really, it's most famous industry being the Monteiths brewery.

The first night we had dinner in a recommended restaurant, Frank's, that had a real Tibetan chef (as opposed to a fake one - later he came out of the kitchen wearing the full Tibetan monk robes, and had a shaven head and everything - cool!). So I had to try the momo's, which were lovely. There was a dance night organised for later that night, so we hung around. Unfortunately it was very poorly attended, so we were a bit embarrassed for all the dancers, but they put on a great show regardless. I think the dancers came from various different dance schools in the area as there were very different styles of dancing, so it was all pretty cool really.

The next night we booked the brewery tour, which had a good few people on it. It was the usual brewery tour I suppose, and the guide was good, even though he'd only started the week before (he was well into his fifties I reckon). He was a tad lax in terms of his controlled dispensing of the free beer at the end of the tour though, basically leaving us all to help ourselves, and he seemed to forget that there was supposed to be a time limit! He was a good 'auld codger though, as he started telling myself and Sarah his life story over his third or fourth pint (another one of those somewhat sad, or lonely, or something, characters I've encountered throughout New Zealand).

After the tour we were bused to a nearby pub for a cheap BBQ and more pints, but it was a quite enough night (a Sunday I think), and we got home early enough. The next day we bounced on to the hippie hangout of Motueka on the northern coast of the South Island.