Greymouth

Allen's answer as to why we had to stop overnight in Greymouth was because the driver can only go so far each day, legally speaking. It actually seems like the only reason you would stop there. Greymouth is, however, home to the Monteith's brewery, which is my second favourite New Zealand beer. Normally, the brewery is open to the public for tours. However, it's currently under renovations, so they bring in guests to watch a video on the beer making process, and then have a taste of everything. I had no desire to pay money to watch a video, so I convinced Chantal to just go to a pub and drink beer- this way we could have our own taste test and avoid the lighter beers that neither of us enjoys anyways.

We wandered around Greymouth, trying to see if there was anything cool, but for some reason New Zealand was having a national holiday and everything was closed. This was okay in Nelson, not so much in Greymouth. It was worse when you consider the fact that everything was shrouded in fog so the town seemed quite desolate.

Our wanderings brought us to the pub that the brewery tour would end up at, and there was a random Kiwi guy standing outside who told us to come in for a beer. We were going to go in anyways, but we didn't want him to think he was the reason, so we looked around the outside of the building before heading in. The guy was standing at the bar and immediately said "Atta girls!" He was wearing tall white rain boots and kind of looked like a hobbit. Still, he was quite friendly and engaged us in conversation while we ordered beers. When we sat down at a table, he came and sat down next to us. It was interesting to hear about his life as a fisherman, and he had a lot of friends in the bar who came and sat with us. I felt like I was getting a lesson in Greymouth 101. At one point, he invited us back to his boat for some fresh cooked fish. He claimed he was just being friendly, but Chantal shrugged off the invitation easily enough. We were out of beer, so I headed to the bar to grab the next round. When I went to pay, the bartender grabbed my hand and warned me about the character of the fisherman we were talking to. Sketchy. When I came back, I tried to tell Chantal but she didn't quite understand my mumblings. Lucky for us, we decided to order dinner from the bar (only 15 dollars for 3 salads and a delicious burger) so the fisherman couldn't keep pushing us to come with him. When Chantal went up to get more beer, the bartender warned her away from our new friend too. After a while he got distracted by the VLTS in the bar though, and left us to chat with his young employee who left school when he was 13 to make his riches on a fishing boat. I think he had an IQ close to a boot, poor guy. He kept trying to explain how unfair it was that he did all the work and his boss got all the money (.. yup, that's how the world goes round!)

Our Magic Bus friends showed up when we were eating and headed into the restaurant area for dinner. When our young fisherman disappeared into the toilets, we ran away and stayed with our travelling buddies for the rest of the night, partly to avoid the sketchy fisherman, but mostly to get away from the ridiculously boring young employee.

Going to a pub on a Monday night to get a taste of what a town is about is probably not the best way to get a good impression, but it did make for quite an entertaining evening.