This morning we had to go to the hospital. But don’t panic, all is ok.
We had a great night sleep at the Greymouth freedom camp. We headed off about 9am as Mike needed to go to the hospital for blood tests. With this new medication he is on, he needs to have fortnightly blood tests. And they don’t have pathlabs in the south island, so we had to go to the hospital for it.
It’s quite different here going for blood test. In Hamilton, every sits in the waiting room, ignoring eye contact with anyone else. In Greymouth, everyone is chatting, making small talk about the weather, and joking and laughing. It was kinda cool.
After that we headed to Lake Kaniere. Some YouTubers we follow invited us to visit, so we did! We’ve been following each other for years, and they are the best NZ channel we follow. They are @LeopardsGoWild and they live full time in their caravan with their 3 kids. So, it was so cool to finally meet them.
We didn’t feel like staying at the doc camp they were at, so we continued on towards the hokitika gorge, taking the gravel back roads. On the way was an incredible waterfall, which of course we had to photograph. Except Mike fell over on the slippery rocks and grazed his elbow rather nastily. I put a plaster on it and hope it will be ok.
We continued on to the Hokitika gorge, arriving just before 5pm. It was a great time to visit, the rou buses just leaving and not too many people. And the water was just unreal! We’d been here before but the water wasn’t this blue. Last time it was like a murky floury blue, this time it was a bright turquoise, almost fluorescent. It was so beautiful I couldn’t stop looking at it.
After that came the time to look for somewhere to camp. I had the NZMCA park in Hokitika lined up, but it was absolutey chockers. So we continued on. We were both feeling really tired. There was a park over property in Ross. We drove up, saw the gate across, and decided we didn’t like the look of it, so turned back. Then I realised how tired I was, so we did a double take. I suggested we just look at it, and if we still don’t like it, we move on.
It was actually a beautiful spot surrounded by trees, and was already very full with motorhomes. But we found a spot, and for $10 a night it felt safe and was very peaceful. (Incidentally, Jenny and Barry checked out this spot the previous day and turned away too!)