Nelson

From Kaikoura I travelled on to Nelson. We made a couple of stops on the way the first was at a waterfall - when we got closer though we saw that there were loads of baby seals playing in the water at the bottom of the falls with no parents in sight.





We stopped again to change buses at Picton. In the afternoon we stopped at the Mud House winery in the Marlborough Wine Region for a free tasting organised by the Magic Bus. I ended up buying a bottle of red.

I stayed in another nice hostel, the Paradiso. It had a swimming pool and spa pool - you could also order Thai meals which only cost 2 pounds! On the first night we watched X-men 3. One of the lads in the hostal had worked on some the digital effects for the film.

Next day we were up bright and early to go into the Abel Tasman National Park. The driver dropped us off in the park and we took a water taxi up the coast to the start of a walk. The weather was fine and the walk was supposed to take 4 hours however it took us about 2 and a half so we had to wait around for the bus to collect us. The park was OK but there wasn't much to see apart from some cliff top views and a bit of forest.




That night we decided to see what the Nelson nightlife had to offer. It was Friday night but all the pubs were dead. We had lots of drinks vouchers from the hostel and found a hotel bar with a live band. After the band we saw this strange neon sign down the street for somewhere called Rock Bar - we decided to check it out - it was just a normal club but it was packed and they were playing videos to go with the music on a big screen. Finally headed home ready for the journey to Greymouth the next day.