We left Greymouth today early morning and moved to DOC campsite (DOC means Department of Conservation and they run a lot of cheap camps around the country) Goldsborough, which is at the old gold mining city location. Firstly had the idea to take a look for some gold but as it was raining a lot we just had a quick breakfast under shelter and then hit the road to Hokitika
, the city of jade, which looks a bit like old gold mining city. Really nice, perfect atmosphere and jade’s factories everywhere. Vlada and Tomas wanted to buy some kind of amulet here so we went shop by shop and looked for it. Almost without success, but finally they choose one and are happy.
We also met some other kayakers from all over the world – there is no water at the moment, everybody is just waiting for huge rain and believe the water will be higher. Have the same plan, just wanted to take a look on the Styx river, where you need to walk with your kayak for about two hours. When we realized the sand flies are everywhere and there is a lot of them we quickly haul off. Going around Dorothy Falls which are really nice, even in this bad weather.
Did some shopping, Vlada is really sad as his credit card was declined for third of fourth time and he don’t know why. After some coffee and snack we decided not to wait for water and went to the Fox Glacier – there must be water for sure.