It had to happen. Today dawned clear and bright, not a hint of cloud over the mountains or the glacier, no problems for the helicopters.

We had breakfast fairly early, beating the marauding hordes of Chinese tourists, and we left Franz Josef just before 09 .00. Not much traffic on the road and not a long drive, only 178km which took about 2 hours. We stopped just before Greymouth to fill the car up with petrol and then slowly drove the last 10km, the Avis car park was about 75m before the train station but badly signed. The actual Avis office is in the train station although we had nothing to tell us that but we bumped into a lady in the carpark.

Again we were asked for a voucher for our train travel, everywhere we have been we have been asked for a voucher, again I explained we have an electronic itinerary and no actual paper. We got our train tickets and checked our baggage into what passes in NZ as a sophisticated and modern baggage system, i.e. a static conveyor belt.

We then walked a short distance to the wharf which runs along the river before it joins the nearby see, warning signs not to swim or eat fish from the river due to the sewage outlet.

We then walked into the metropolis of Greymouth, to say its a dump would be to oversell it, not the nicest of places. We had a coffee and then walked back to the station to pick up our Avis checkout documents, when we dropped the car keys off earlier the clerk was rushing off and hadn't had time to do them. She then explained there would be a $123 charge for the extra insurance we had signed for. I said we had declined all the extra insurances as we had third party insurance bought in the UK so she would email Wellington to sort it out . I foresee an argument later on but will leave it to Audley Travel to sort out.

We walked over the train tracks to the Countdown supermarket to buy a sandwich for the journey, Kiwi's seem to add cheese to everything, virtually impossible to buy a sandwich without it. We then went back to the station to grab a bench before lots of other passengers arrived, the train from Christchurch arrived at about 13.25, 20 minutes late. The train had to go down the line past Greymouth so they could uncouple the engine and move it to the front.

It's certainly not the Andean Explorer! No fashion show, no dancing girls. Despite that it was a nice journey, stunning scenary, especially over the various bridges and viaducts and all with a running commentary available on headsets. The total journey is about 236km but it took over 4.5 hours as parts of the journey have speed restrictions for various reasons.

We arrived in Christchurch about 18 .45 which was about 15 minutes behind schedule but considering the service has only been running for 3 days following a 6 week outage due to fires affecting several bridges wasn't too bad. The train wasn't full by any means, we suspect a lot of people have either not realised the train is back on or decided not to risk it, we much preferred the train journey to having to drive from Greymouth.

Our driver was there to meet us and it only took about 15 minutes to transfer us to the George Hotel. We dumped the bags and headed out, the concierge had given us a map and highlighted various locations.

We have said before that places in NZ close early and Saturday night is no exception, it was quiet! We ended up in The Bog, an Irish bar with live music, beer, wine and deep fried food. We left about 22.00, even for a Saturday night the place was only half full, perhaps it would get busier later?

No definite plans for our last day tomorrow, a lot of the city is still recovering from the big earthquake in 2011, even in the short time we have been here we have seen empty plots, plots fenced off etc. We will probably just wander around although there is a central tram system which might be worth using to get around.