Lake Brunner to Murchison

Saturday we set off early from Lake Brunner as we had arranged to meet our tourism good friends, Jan & Doug, for a late lunch in Murchison where they would be passing through with their 2 American tourists enroute from Golden Bay to Westport.
On the way we had a stroll through Reefton which is a lovely revived village with all the old shops newly painted and a mass of colourful hanging baskets on both sides of the main street. We bought some nice treats from the bakery while there!

The sandfly dance!

A new mountain bike / walking track called 'The Ghost Trail' has been opened at Lyell where a DOC camp is and we did a little walk along it, swatting sandflies whenever we stood still. There were some steep drops off the track so you would need to be careful on a bike.

We came upon the longest swingbridge in NZ which goes over the Buller River before we reached Murchison and there were lots of tourists stopped there. You can also do a zipwire ride alongside the bridge or have a jet boat experience. We just observed from the edge as they charge $5 each just to walk across the bridge! Having crossed about 30 of them in the last few months we didn't feel the need to pay to do another!

A tolled swingbridge!

We must have dawdled a bit as Jan and Doug had beaten us to Murchison by about 1/2 hour but it was so lovely to see them after a gap of 5 months and meet the 2 American ladies. Then it was onwards to Westport for them and about 1 km down the road for us to the Murchison Golf Club which is, like all the rest of the country, so dry with the drought we are undergoing. We played on it about 4 months ago towards the beginning of our South Island tour. I've decided that my golf must actually be improving despite my handicap going out as I managed to go around with 10 shots less than last time. Then it was back to the NZMCA park in Murchison that we stayed at previously. Quite a lot of vans there and they had just finished having "Happy Hour" when we arrived at 6.00pm but Barry and Mary who, like our neighbours at Lake Brunner, were from Mapua, Nelson invited us into their caravan for a drink and chat. It turned out that Mary is the godmother of a Physio I know who used to have a practice in Te Puke!
After a drink Len and I wandered down to the Commercial Hotel for a light dinner which we had rather a wait for as they had a huge table to serve but it was nice to have a night off cooking!