Another beautiful day and an early cold swim for Rowan and Germie. Rowan contacted Willow and Rory who he connected up with on Facebook. They are kaitiaki (guardians) of the Arahura River. They are taking us all onto the river to fossick for Pounamu. There are two other guys with us from Dunedin. They find a nice pale piece of greenstone and Rowan finds the best piece out in the river. They reckon it is a $1,000 piece if you shined up one side.

From our morning excursion we headed to Hokitika. We op shopped of course! Then headed to a couple of the greenstone shops so Germie could get gifts for her family and friends back home. A quick stop at the supermarket before heading to the beach. The day is absolutely stunning and you can clearly see Mt Aoraki (Cook). We have a swim at the beach before heading south.

A must stop at Amethyst Pools. Lucky for us we didn’t need to do any digging as someone else already did that for us. A bit different doing it on a nice day, still enjoyable.

We stayed the night at a spot about 15min north of Franz Josef. There was a small walk down the hill to a refreshing stream which we all jumped into. Another great day finished.