I went to St. Arnaud to do some hiking in Nelson Lakes National Park, it's a very quiet place ( except the birds, they are really noisy, but that just shows how quiet the place is !! ) . I took a shuttle to Kawatiri Junction a few days later to make sure that I would be there in time for that stupid backpacker bus to pick me up along the road to take me to Punakaiki, because I wasn't sure whether I could hitchhike to that junction in time as there weren't many cars passing through St. Arnaud, especially not in the morning. It was one of that cloudy rainy mornings - the backpacker bus showed up just in time...at 9.45 it came around the corner...and passed without stopping. Couldn't stop laughing, that was just what I had dreamed of the night before, but who needs that bus anyway. I had to get out of the middle of nowhere, so I started hitchhiking, I went to Murchison first, then on to that crossroad close to the westcoast where one road goes up to Westport and the other one down along the westcoast and got picked up by an older guy. He turned out to be the owner of an old historic goldmine near Charleston, so I got a free tour through the mine when we arrived in Charleston. He told me that I might even have seen him on german television, as there was this german fellow called Hardy Krueger who made a film about the ( true nature of the ) Westcoast of the South Island and the people living there back in the late 70ies, and he stopped over in Charleston to do some filming here and even helped him building his place ( Has anyone seen that film? I guess I missed out on that one!) . Anyway, I had to go on, I finally found someone to take me down to Punakaiki ( along that beautiful coastline, althrough it was a little too cloudy ) , and this guy even spoke a little german, as he was living in Frankfurt for a while... now even the Kiwis are starting to talk german to me...AWFUL!!!!! After a late lunch I walked over to see the Pancake Rocks in the afternoon, and the bus that was supposed to pick me up in the morning was having a photostop over there right then, so I walked over to them and heard the busdriver talk to somebody about that junction he had missed in the morning...he was pretty happy to see me, I think the expression on his face when he realised who I was while still wondering how I made it here was even better than the expression on my face when I saw the bus passing by in the morning.... anyway, I did a nice hike the next day ( and it was sunny, so I could see all the cliffs and hills ) , a little hike called Truman Track ( huge waves and rocks at a lovely beach after walking through some native bush/ forest ) and a longer walk towards the Paparoa NP...I liked the vegetation, lots of huge trees with moss on them, palms and fern that always made you wonder what may be behind the next bend of the path...the hidden valley of the dinosaurs maybe??? I left Punakaiki in the afternoon as I was running out of groceries, I went on to Greymouth , did some food shopping over there and left the next morning, heading towards Franz Josef ( Glacier ). On the way over there we did a lot of touristic stops, pretty annoying, but at least we stopped at a deer farm where a Westcoaster told us about how they made a living back in the good old days when men were men and sheep were scared...and no auckland-to-christchurch-in-a-day-with-a-bungy-jump-option-tourists ( like us ) were roaming the islands, this guy was awesome, I liked his rough westcoast-sense of humour ...you could also try some possum pie over there...possums are those little animals that were introduced to new zealand and ( as so many things that were introduced) became a plaque they can't get rid off anymore, destroying the native bush over here....one of the most common local activities/sports ( right after rugby, of course ) is to race along the streets after sunset to hit as many possums as possible....Kiwis are pretty concerned about/ occupied with everything that was intoduced some time ago, which just shows their efforts to save their amazing natural enviroment, but it's a little odd too when you think of the fact that they were introduced themselves.....ohh, I think I'm starting to ramble.....ok, I arrived at Franz Josef in the afternoon and did a hike to see the glacier, I couldn't get very close as there was a flood 3 days ago that destroyed parts of the path leading to the glacier and a little bridge and I didn't want to get wet feed while walking though a river as it was already cold enough on that rainy afternoon. The next day we went on south, passing FOX ( Glacier) and Lake Mathesen, which is called the Mirror Lake, because it reflects an amazing panorama of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman on a sunny day...... as it was cloudy and raining straight, I don't need to tell you what the lake reflected....originally I wanted to stay there for a while, do a glacier hike on FOX Glacier and go for some hikes around Lake Mathesen, but I changed my mind when we got there, didn't make much sense to stay and wait for better weather, so I just went for a short walk to see something of the lake at all, just accompanied by some hardcore-Japanese, we were completely wet after 1 minute. I arrived in Queenstown in the evening and went to a bird park the next day to spot some Kiwi-birds, couldn't stop giggling when I saw them jump around and racing along very fast, like a way to big Kiwi-fruit with legs and a long beak, pretty unique. The next day I took a tour down to the Fjordland NP and made a cruise on the famous Milford Sound. I stayed in Te Anau for 2 nights to do some kajaking on the Doubtful Sound which was way better than the cruise on Milford Sound. Since it's more difficult to get to that second fjord ( you have to cross a lake with a boat and a mountain pass by bus to get there), we were almost on our own in that remote wilderness. I returned to Queenstown a day ago, did some wicked rafting on the Shotover River this morning and gonna head towards Dunedin tomorrow.