Back to the B&B, dry off and change, and into the car again to head south to Hokitika.
The town is known for its greenstone, and we were interested in souvenir shopping. In the end, we bought little as we simply weren't into the Maori designs on most of the pieces. Conrad found a nice rougher piece of the stone (a type of jade) for use as a paperweight, though. And once again we walked the beach and picked up stones. Susan later told us that she suspected one of our finds was a genuine piece of greenstone - what luck!
The other thing about Hokitika is it's the site of an annual wild/bush foods festival. That will take place in march, but in the spirit of that I had a whitebait fritter (omelet) for lunch. Not much flavour to the fish, but darn were those fries really good!
Having shopped and walked in the wonderfully sunny afternoon, we headed inland to the Hokitika Gorge. Wow. No really: wow. The colour of the water in the river gorge is astonishing, and well worth the drive.
The drive, I should mention, is not through sheep country. The area is known for dairy farming, as we saw. Some cows were friendly, one gave me a real stink eye, and there was one that relaxed in the same manner as Milo. Oh, and some sheep, of course!
Back to the B&B after that. We had a whole lot more wine and some assorted items for a casual dinner. As we sat out on the patio, we drank in the glow of a sunset over the Tasman Sea below.
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