Welcome to the wet coast! We planned a day off. Our hope was to stay in Hokitika, but Greymouth will have to do. We just didn’t plan 4 days off. The weather has been rather chaotic. Heaps of lightening, thunder and of course rain.

On Monday, we headed back into the town centre, hoping to have a small window of no rain. We went to the warehouse to see what they had for wet weather gear. Apparently, girls don’t get wet, just boys. I guess I will shop in the boys’ area. I found a potential high vis rain coat which would work. On our way to the supermarket the rain began. Rowan put his rain coat on and I put my poncho on. Well by the time I got to the supermarket I was soaked through. The poncho does nothing. I guess that answers that question. We get back to the campground and I put all our clothes in the wash. There is nowhere to hang it out that is undercover so I hang it on chairs and tables. One of the staff tell me to hang it out in the TV room with the heater. Perfect! Luckily it is not busy in there. We end up laying on the couches and reading books. I have just started reading Robin Hobb and I am quite enjoying her book.

Tuesday, rain. The rain was so bad in the morning that we waited till after lunch to head into town. My rear tyre keeps going down, so we will go to a bike shop and replace the inner tube. The whole easter weekend has really been annoying with shops closed. We have more non religious citizens than Christian. They are welcome to celebrate as long as it doesn’t affect people who don’t share your religion. As Rowan keeps saying, I hope your Friday was better than Jesus’s.

The bike shop happily fixed my tyre. We went op shopping while we waited. I ended up back at the warehouse to get that high vis jacket. Rowan also got a vest since his rain coat is black. They are incredibly bright yellow. The drivers in Greymouth actively try to run you off the road. I had one guy move halfway into the wrong lane just because he wanted to. Rowan had a guy look at him, then do a u-turn right in front of him, making him stop. There are cycle lanes here, but still, they don’t want cyclists on the road. On the way back to the bike shop it starts to bucket down. I have a rain coat yay, but Rowan doesn’t. My tyre is all fixed now. It’s time to head back to camp and dry off.

Wednesday, which we planned to cycle as it was only light rain turned out to be heavy rain. Today we didn’t go anywhere. We stayed in the TV room where it was warm. We had some paperwork to do and I really enjoyed reading. We have met a few people here but no other cyclists. I think most stay in Kumara. Denise and Murray saw us struggle in for the evening in Reefton. They recognised us straight away. Lovely couple from Nelson, they are just here on holiday. We got a fresh orange juice but some butthole decided they wanted it so we lost a whole litre of nice juice. It really annoyed Rowan. It is the first thing that has gone missing so we can’t really complain.

Thursday, today I was promised to be dry. But the weather had other plans. We needed to go to the supermarket as we didn’t have enough food for the day without eating into our dry food stocks. We waited out the rain for a hopeful dry patch and headed in. The wind was so strong, I felt like I was barely moving forward. Annoyingly once we got back the weather just kept getting better and better. The weather man said yuck till 5pm. We did think about hoping on our bikes but we are still waiting for Rowan to get a repeat prescription. We really want to get to Ross, which is a bit further than Hokitika. So either way we are waiting.