December 29th, 2015

Another good night of sleep, we awoke to go visit Victoria Forest Park and Reefton. Heading out of town to the northeast, a rather thick fog
descended on the landscape.  We passed Brunner Mine, site of NZ's worst mining accident, but didn't end up visiting it.  Reefton was a very small
town, which if nothing else made it easier to find our trail.  Our trail was down a 10 km or so one lane road that eventually became gravel.
The trail head was at the end of the road, and there was no one else out there.  We set off on the loop hike there (around 3 km) which run up
into the foothills, along the ridge, and back down.  There used to be more to the trail, as it visited the old mine, but the "old mine" was 
once again a functioning coal mine, so those branches were closed off.  The fog evaporated, and it turned into a sunny day, although still shadowy
under the beech forest.

After returning from our hike, we continued north, pass Reefton, towards Buller Gorge in the north section of the the park. After one minor misturn,
we found the gorge, although we ended up on the road behind a very slow and stubborn RV.  Eventually, we came to the swing bridge across the river,
which we took, and additionally road a zipline back to the other side, after a short hike. This marked the north-most part of our trip, and we turned
around and returned to Reefton for some lunch. It was at this juncture that I was already becoming weary of pub/fried food. We returned to our hotel
in Greymouth, where I had to straighten out of an issue of misbooking (I didn't book the room enough days) which was fortunately resolved quickly and
satifactorily.

While Jen wrangled the video from our GoPro, I went on a short walk that was based out of Greymouth. They had a short brushwalk up into the hills
where they were restoring the original forest, and it was quite a pleasant (if somewhat breathless) walk.  On the way up, I was approached by a weka,
which didn't seem very afraid at all. Other wildlife I saw included a rather impressive bumble bee, and various birds that flitted through the canopy.

Returning to the hotel, we decided against going out for dinner, and instead I went down to the local New World grocery and bought all the fixings for
a sandwich (and some Speight's Cider) and made a cold dinner back at the hotel, which was quite good.  We debated the next day's plans, and decided
to head down to Hotitika area.