The journey is the experience

Live from this internetbus in Frans Joseph...

The coolest internet-cafe so far! Frans Joseph is all about the glacier with the same name, unfortunately I won't have time to do the hike, but I will take a walk now to the glacier mouth.

Yesterday I took off from Nelson towards a small, depressing town called Greymouth. THe only thing happening there really, is the brewing of their famous beer Monteith. As a natural consequence we all went for the combined brewery tour/BBQ in order to keep from climbing the walls. Some people were up for a three night stay, I would rather eat my hat if I had one. But the brewery was a really charming, all (almost) manual beer factory, with just 7 full time employees. Some of them have worked there for 25-40 years...

Below is a batch of their most famous brew, the Original Monteith.

Different varieties of the beer sold.

At the end of the tour there was, of course, a much longed for and rather generous tasting in the bar. After we got to try a small sip of all the different brews seen below, we got to pour ourselves a beer of choice, as many as we could down in ten minutes.

(was kind of fun standing behind the bar for a change)

After this we were all transported about 150 metres in a van (global warming?) to the Railway Hotel, an empty, boring pub where we enjoyed a simple but nice bbq. Apparently the record in sausage-bingeing is 37 sausages. I only got to two though. I left at 11 pm, since I was getting up to catch the bus this morning, but some were having a full on party, including two young swedish boys, accompanied by two funny welsh blokes, also known as Neil and George. Good fun!

Travelling by bus in NZ isn't nearly as boring and tiring as I'm used to in Stockholm. YOu constantly stumble upon views like this one above, or the one below, mountains covered in clouds. The scenery is beyond adjectives.

(clouds covering the top of these hills)

On the way from Nelson to Greymouth yesterday, which is the longest drive of this trip, we stopped in many places, all of which were well worth the extra miles. One was the "Pancake holes", an awesome formation of limestones that are constantly carved out by the strong forces of the ocean. When the tide comes in it slowly undermines the rock, creating caves and holes, that waves break against.

A pool-like formation

The layers of the limestone looks like pancake layers, hence the name...And I like pancakes!

Pancakes, not for chewing

Many hours are spend on the bus, contemplating or chatting or reading..I find it hard to sleep though, cause I don't wanna miss out on anything.

This is the bus that got me here and will take me to Queenstown tomorrow.

We also stopped to see a beautiful beach and a seal colony. Was fun to see them play or just being lazy in the sun, like this big male (in the centre of the picture)
They smell really bad though...

THe beach near the seal colony (I know, I should remember the names, but there are so many stops, it's "mindbottling" (see blades of glory to understand that one).