The ferry ride to the South Island was spectacular. At first it was grey but as we got closer to South Island's Marlborough Sound, we got a great view of cliffs and green hills and outrageous sunsets. Eric took about 20 photos.

That night we stayed in a campground on the ferry port of Picton. There we met Nurse #5--a woman from England named Janet. She had once spent eight months bicycling through SE Asia, and was now backpacking through NZ on the way to a wedding. We asked her why so many travellers we meet are nurses. She said her skills are always in demand and she has no fear of getting re-employed when she goes back.

She has the best tent we've seen. You can set up the fly independently, so you can pack and unpack the rest of your tent and your gear under it in a pissing rain. No wet tent!

That day we rode 113k to Nelson. This was our only sunny riding day on the South Island. We totally bundled up and then started sweating. We went over two big hills. Then we got within 10k of Nelson and met a vicious headwind that swept onto us from the Tasman Sea. At times we could barely cycle faster than the pedestrians walking on the sidewalk next to us.

This is where a bicycle computer can kill you. When we were within 10k I looked at it and we were going 15k an hour. So I figured we'd get there in about 45 minutes. Then our speed dropped to 10k, and my estimate went up to an hour.Then our speed dropped to 6k and I got very depressed. It was hard riding. And when we arrived there weren't any good places to stay in town. We ended up paying too much for some 'cabin' with no toilets about 3k out of town. (Don't stay there! Nelson Cabins).

The next day we ran into Nurses #1 and #2, Maarten and Karin, the Dutch tandem team we had met in the Coromandel. We ended up having a long lovely breakfast together in a cafe. The last time we'd seen them, their whole itinerary was up in the air. They had planned to bicycle all over the place, but they had set those plans aside after the winds of the Coromandel.

In Nelson, they explained their new plan. They had stored their bikes back in Picton, and bought bus passes (NZ$295 each) that allow them to travel all around the South Island at will. That was the only way they could hope to cover the distance.

It sounded like a good plan to me. Eric and I were running out of time, too, and there was no way we could fit everything in without a little cheating. So we bought a bus ticket to Greymouth on the West Coast. (NZ$48 each). That saved us a few days riding. Unfortunately we couldn't leave til the next day. We couldn't bear going back to our cabin either, so we switched to a backpacker hostel.

The next day we got up to get the bus. While I handled our gear Eric called his grandma and parents and aunt and brother, who were all gathered in Mt. Vernon Ohio. He later described it as talking to six people in five minutes. But he was very happy to hear their voices.

We rode West in a lovely bus. The buses here aren't like Greyhound at all. They are very clean, with spotless windows, and the driver is a bit of a tour guide, telling you all about the scenery flying past. He's also a paperboy! Several times during our ride he opened either his window or the front door to hurl an individual newspaper into a home in the middle of the bush.

Most of what we passed was farmland, so I didn't really regret not riding that part. But then we headed to Westport, on the NW coast, and headed south along the coast to Greymouth.That was outrageously beautiful and hilly. I do wish we could have ridden it. It looked like Big Sur. Massive cliffs and lots of froth below. Actually I don't totally regret riding the bus. For most of our ride it was pissing down rain and blowing real hard. The bus stopped partway down the coast at a place called Pancake Rocks so we could take a walk. So we got to check out these thin layered rocks and some blow holes (they weren't blowing when we arrived because the tide was out).

The rain was still torrential by the time we arrived in Greymouth in early afternoon. We assembled our bikes and rode three blocks to a backpacker hostel--and got totally drenched by the time we arrived.

The place was called Noah's Ark and is the best backpackers I've seen yet. (fyi, a Backpackers is a cheap hotel with a communal kitchen, showers, bathrooms and sitting room. Rooms usually don't have phones or televisons or bathrooms). All the rooms were dedicated to an ark animal. We got the elephant room. Great murals of elephants on the wall and a stuffed elephant toy on the bed.

A few hours later, Maarten and Karin arrived. This wasn't a total coincidence since we knew they were headed to Greymouth too. In fact, we were sort of expecting them. It was technically the day after Thanksgiving, but it was Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., so Eric was preparing a feast. After checking in, we had gone to a grocery store and bought all the magic ingredients: a pre-roasted chicken (very small), instant stuffing and gravy, a can of creamed corn, an apple pie and vanilla ice cream.

And, of course, potatoes! Eric bought a whole bag of small potatoes because the individual potatoes looked really dirty, all totally crusted with dirt. Eric's face fell when he saw them. He said they were the sorriest potatoes he'd ever seen in his life. He cheered up when he saw the bag of slightly less dirty taters.

By the time Maarten and Karin arrived, we had prepared almost everything, and were still finishing Eric's excellent mashed potatoes. M&K were totally wet so we told them to just dry off and show up for dinner. We served it up in the backpacker diningroom. It was glorious. We only regret we didn't have extra food for the other backpackers.

Maarten and Karin were the perfect guests because they had told us during an earlier meeting that they were very curious about Thanksgiving, and wanted to visit the U.S. during that holiday. We told them we'd feed them a non-instant Thanksgiving dinner some other time in the states. But I think they enjoyed our instant feast. And they raved about Eric's mashed potatoes. We entertained them with stories of the vast amount of mashed spuds that Eric's mom serves up at Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh.

That night Maarten and Karin treated us to beers. We sampled all sorts of local brews. Dark, light and in between. They were quite good. We had a total of 11 half-pints, which was pretty light drinking. The total bill was NZ$25 (about US$14).

next:  The Franz Josef glacier

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