Greymouth (city of love)

Moving down to Greymouth today!!! Along the way to Greymouth, we had stopped at a few places to see seal colonies (somewhere around westport) and pancake rocks at Punakaiki. I've heard that if the tide is high, we can see the water hit the pancake rock!!! Unfortunately, the sea was quite calm!!! So, nothing special only rocks!!!! Anyway, it is amazing how the nature created those layer rocks!

We left Nelson around 8 am and arrived at Greymouth at 4.30pm. It was a lovely day, the weather was nice, a bit hot actually. I stayyed at the backpackers called "Global village". Gosh, It was extremely good!!!!! I felt impressed since my first step there!!! I'm not trying to be over on the top here, I'm just very honest!!!! I took lots of photos of it. This place wasn't on the list of Magic bus, so I had to go there myself. The driver (Flash) droped me at the backpackers they stayyed. I got only a little map with me. Not surprisingly, I couldn't find the place as the map didn't provide much in detail. I stopped and asked the lady walking along the street. From her uniform, she should work for a bank. Her name is Sue. She was very kind to me! She offered me a lift because she was about going that way. How nice!!!! I was very appreciated!!! I gave her a small souvenir I had for her kindness.

Once I got to the backpacker, the first thing I did was taking a photo. :P Then, I met the owners (they're couple, obviously the wife is from Japan). Both of them were nice and friendly. He showed me facilities and recommended places to go in Greymouth.

A good thing of travelling in Summer is that it won't get dark until nearly 9 pm. After putting my bags away, I went to the place which we could see Mt. cook. Instead of riding a bike, I decided to walk there. It took me around half an hour (one-way). A bit far, but a good walk!!! Unfortunately, the weather was not that good, the sky wasn't clear. I therefore couldn't see mt. cook. :(

I then rode a bike to the city, just wanted to see the city and remembered the way to be picked up. I rode only 10 minutes to get there. The city was very small, even though Greymouth is the biggest city on the west coast!!!

On the way back, I met one german guy who stayyed in the same backpacker. So, we rode back together. We found out that we stayyed at the same place in Nelson too, but he left the day before I got there. Anyway, we knew the same people there. That was funny, wasn't it? How small New Zealand is!!!!
I thought, he was a nice and romantic guy. He studied Industrial engineering. He loves nature very much, he enjoyed watching sunrise and sunset!!! He reminded me my german friend from EPP class. I thought they were similar. They were kind of people who were far away from the word "matirialism". I don't really know how to explain, to me, their feelings were real without any dressing up.

German girls are very nice too. I've met some myself. My roomate tonight was German, Nanni (Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the german guy's name. It sounded too German). Nanni and I went for Sauna together (one of the facilities here). That's why we had a lots of conversation. I enjoyed talking to her. She wanted to be an English teacher, she took the course back home (Frankfruit, Germany) before she came here for holiday. That's my day... I had a good day!!!

For more details, Greymouth is the city of love (I didn't know the reason for this, but that's what the driver told us). There were all together around 13,000 people. Ho Ho !!! Hope you can imagine how big it is!!! eiei