The Campervan Convoy Begins!

One of the guys that I had met up with at the Paradiso had just recently come back from the Cook Islands where he met a group of three girls who were currently traveling New Zealand as well.  They decided to meet up with us for the night and we all hung out in the magic bus again and decided we should all travel down the west coast together.  They had giant campervan and I had my rental car so the next morning away we went.  

All six of us (three guys and three girls) decided to head down to Greymouth for the night.  Four of us traveled in the campervan while myself and another guy traveling in my rental car.  On the way to Greymouth we found one of New Zealand's largest swing bridges and decided to pull over.  Once there we noticed the had one of those famous jet boat rides that claimed to be 3 times better than any jet boat ride in Queenstown so we decided to jump one for a ride.  It was madness.  It lasted 45 minutes and he was ripping around the rough river waters like a man with a death wish.  We were honestly going at crazy speeds about a foot away from the rockface along the river and he would whip us around in a 180 or 270 spin about every couple minutes.  It was well worth the money and I was amazed to see that all seven of us were still in the boat when we returned to the dock.

Once in Greymouth we managed to find a decent hostel to stay in that night and just relaxed, watched a movie, enjoyed the free meat pies from the local bakery, and the free pool table as well.  The next day we were going to go on a rafting trip but missed our bus unfortunately but I was fine with it because I couldn't really of afforded it anyways.  

We decided to do a tour of the Monteith's Brewery instead.  It was well worth it in my mind.  For $25 they took us on a complete tour of the brewery then gave us a sample of all seven of the Monteith's selection.  This brewery supplies the Monteith's Black beer to all of New Zealand and a good portion of the Monteith's Golden beer as well.  The Monteith's Black may have been my favorite.  It contains all five of the malts used wheres the other only use a combination of two or three.  I know I'm not missing out on any malts with the Black.  After the beer tasting they opened up the taps for us for a half an hour or so and let us pour as many of our own beers as we wanted.  I attempted to complete a full circuit around the beer tap track but only made it about halfway unfortunately.  After that they bussed us off to the local bar where they served us dinner and let us party it up for a little while.  

We all went to bed at a relatively decent hour though because we had a big day planned that was going to start at five the next morning.