West Coast on.

In the last blog I forgot to mention the sandflies. When we left Lewis pass we had a multitude of hitch hikers to whom we dealt with the fly spray. We did not realise how many until Lorna vacuumed the bus. The little bodies were everywhere! From Reefton we drove through the morning fog for about half an hour and then on to Greymouth. In this town we found a really good facility behind the Caltex service station. The public dump station has been taken over by a car yard/motor home park/laundrettte/showers/toilet. The dump station is free if you use the facilities. The laundrette/toilets/showers are really clean and reasonably priced and it is a short walk in to the town centre. After making use of this amenity we lunched at the mouth of the Grey river before setting off North to look for a place to stay the night. Nothing appealed, and after visiting the pancake rocks at Punakaiki we drove on to Westport. The Workingmens Club POP was a comfortable stay. Next day, after refuelling, we drove out to Cape Foulwind where we walked to the lighthouse and elected not to walk to the seal clony. While we were having a big clean up a weka hopped in to the bus and investigated the back window shelf. Tauranga Bay was the scene of our lunch before we headed off towards Murchison. Ice creams provided the sustenance needed to get us to the Owen River Reserve. This is a delightful big grass reserve at the confluence of the Buller and Owen rivers. In the morning an attempt to have two showers for the price of one did not work - the water went cold on Lorna! Next we headed up to the Nelson Lakes, stopping for morning tea at a gliding club strip and watching a very old Slingsby glider winch launch. Lake Rotoiti is a beautiful lake in the midst of mountains and the accompanying village of St. Arnaud is quaint. Then it was on to Motueka through even more interesting farm land. the Hop fields look really strange with the big frames and no plants. The Motueka Beach Reserve is a good spot to spend two nights and do some washing. The little washing machine and the wringer work well along withthe tent pole washing line. Morning cloud has burnt off and we are in brilliant sunshine for the second day in a row. Tomorrow we will probably move further up towards Farewell Spit.