The heart of the West Coast

We have been in Greymouth, 'the heart of the West Coast', for 2 days now, as the city is often referred to, with a population of just 13,500, it is the largest on the West Coast. However, the name is more fitting, everything seems a bit gray here. Greymouth is actually the ugliest 'city' we have seen in New Zealand so far. We expected more from the heart of the West Coast, especially since the West Coast is beautiful. Only the weather is changeable and it rains here quite often. Fortunately, we have already had a few sunny days.

After driving south along the West Coast from Karamea and spending the nights at different campsites, we wanted to have a proper roof over our heads again in Greymouth and planned to work in a hostel for 2 weeks in exchange for free accommodation. Then we would finally have met some other travelers, as we were only two during the week of camping. So with a little anticipation, we arrived at the hostel on Tuesday, but we could already see from the outside that it looked quite abandoned. Then we learned that the hostel had been closed for a long time and we were supposed to help with renovating, but nobody had told us before, we assumed a normal housekeeping job. Instead of making beds and cleaning, we are now painting walls, which would not be a problem if we didn't have to live completely alone in the hostel. And there is not much to do in the area either. That was not exactly what we expected. But traveling is always full of surprises and who can say that they had a whole hostel to themselves for a week (yes, fortunately we were able to shorten the time by a week) ;)

Here are photos of the places we visited along the West Coast:

Pokororo Swing Bridge in Motueka

Millerton Incline

Millerton was a small coal mining town from the 19th-20th century. Today the small town is almost uninhabited.

The Operara Arch in Kahurangi National Park