Cycle: 111km

Blimey, I'm struggling with these early mornings at the moment. I guess I just really need sleep to let my body recover from all the exercise. Having drawn up an itinerary for the rest of our trip we're having to push it quite hard to keep up. Things will get a bit easier in a few days so this was the last tough day for a while.

The day was spent passing through more forest-clad hills and farmland. We stopped off at a very strange place (again, I'd been here 8 years ago) where the owners had an obsession with killing possums. Poor critters. They're revered in Australia but hated here. We think they're quite cute really, but don't tell any Kiwis we told you so! We simply used their toilets (our revenge!), didn't spend any money and got the hell out of there! There were some cool goats though!

As the day progressed we hit the coast more and more. We stopped at Ross and had cups of tea and a really good sandwich at the Roddy Nugget Cafe. Typical with our longer cycling days our thought focus on the best sources of food available!

Next up we had a stroke of luck in Hokitika. I was seriously flagging and in dire need of sustenance (only cups of tea so far today, not enough coffee!) After dismissing the uninspiring Stompers we wandered around fairly aimlessly until we happened upon the Cafe de Paris. This won best cafe in 2007 and rightly so! Fantastic coffee, great vege food and cookies. Yum! It was so good we had two coffees and felt ready to take on the day's remaining flat 40km! Before heading off we had a look round the amazing glass blowing workshop there. If we had a car and were heading home soon I think we'd have bought lots of stuff! Maybe they do mail order.

The final 40km into Greymouth were fairly uneventful. Never quite on the coast but never too far away meant we kept on getting glimpses but no lovely scenic sections of road that we'd been hoping for. We got excited when we passed the turn off for Arthur's Pass which we'd gone over (from Greymouth) 10 or 11 weeks ago! We really are rocketing North at the moment!

Okay, so Greymouth is grey by name, grey by nature (and not gray! - so glad to not be working for the yanks anymore!) It's redeeming feature is an awesome hostel: Global Village. This funky place was homely and full of interesting Aboriginal and African art. We had a lovely little room and enjoyed a bottle of wine over dinner. Hmmm, sleep...