This one will be really short because I'm typing on the Libretto today and the keyboard is seriously small. But I want to tell you very quickly what we're up to, and make some notes that I can use for a decent write-up later.

Arthur's Pass was excellent, even though the weather was not. After leaving the mountains behind us, we got some fairer weather, and we reached the west coast without much of a ceremony, the road just sort of bumped into the shoreline.
We went to a town (will fill in name later, map is in tent) to shop for rum, plastic bags to keep luggage dry, and a cup of tea. We found all of that and Internet, the rain radar told us the north was worse than the south. So we skipped the pancake rocks and went south.
The 6 is a wonderful road, lots of rainforest. Some rain, too (only logical). We finally decided to camp out at Okarito beach, after a serious hailstorm.
Lovely spot to camp and nice travellers to talk to.
In the morning blue skioes and the sun creeping down the palm trees. Time for tea. We went to the beach to greet the ocean and look for nice pebbles. I brushed my teeth in the ocean and they got seriously clean.
Today was spent riding the twisties down the coast, and getting my luggage rack welded (it broke). Brilliant weather. Stopped at Bruce Bay for a while, the striped stones stacked up in piles were very special. The rocks had silvery spots where they contained mica.
Eventually we reached Haast, found a camping site, and found that Gummihuhn's bike has a flat tire. We'll take care of that tomorrow. Rather tired now.