Nelson & Greymouth

We arrived in Nelson in the afternoon and we decided to spend the night there as we had been up early that morning and were quite tired. The town is quite small and after some grocery shopping we stayed in, made dinner and watched a movie. The TV room was quite small and cold so I turned the heater on as I was really cold, but I guess it got too hot as a guy and a girl told me it was too hot in there and to open a window! I wouldn’t let them open the window and told them if they wanted to they could open the door. But I did turn the heater off. We also enjoyed a free chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream offered by the hostel. It was delicious. We also opted to stay in a dorm room because it was much cheaper than a double room. It’s always interesting spending the night with a room full of strangers. That evening we met a kiwi and we started chatting about the road conditions in the south with the snow that had begun falling lately. He told us there are times when road are closed (which could hamper our travel plans to get to Christchurch on time for our flight) as well as roads where you will require snow chains. That is something we didn’t have. I knew we could have rented them with our car, but since we rented the car in Auckland, we didn’t even think about snow or snow chains. We called the rental company and found out they have an office in Greymouth where we could stop and rent a pair of snow chains. Which is exactly what we did the next day on our way to the Franz Josef Glacier.