Infants Creek

We woke up feeling rested from our trip up to Berlins Cafe. Unfortunately, the worst was to come. Kieran recognized that his wallet was missing yesterday in Arthur's Pass. We had assumed that we would be able to easily find it in the car somewhere. After a deep dive of the car and backpacks, we still couldn't find it. The amazing Berlin cafe host let us borrow his phone and we ordered an incredible English breakfast to thank him.

Dec 31st was dedicated solely towards trying to find Kieran's wallet. We traveled back to Arthur's Pass (2.5 hours) to check at the cafe, but no luck. We checked the Arthurs Pass campsites, and no luck. We drove down to the Forest Lodge (50 minutes), no luck. We even contacted owners and hosts of all the businesses, still no luck. It was officially lost.

Our original plan was to stay with some people in Westport. The search for the wallet resulted in 5 hours of extra driving, so we picked Greymouth as a better destination for NYE. We booked a last-minute hostel and checked in around 6pm. On our way there, we stopped at a small cafe for some food called the Otira Stagecoach Hostel. Their red wine and venison pie was incredible. It was definitely worth the stop to see the old memorabilia they had inside.

Greymouth is a small, farming community, but Mary found a town NYE event happening that night. It was advertised as an event with drinks, food trucks, live music, and midnight fireworks. We set out in an effort to salvage a rough day.

They had an awesome selection of food. We chose to get dumplings and Hungarian flatbread. The food was delicious, even if we put way too much chili oil on the dumplings. Later that night, we met Andre and Ned. They had both just moved to Greymouth from other towns and were excited for a fresh start. We ended up hanging out with them the whole night before calling it quits around 2:30am.

Our internal clocks woke us right up at 8am on January 1st. In our slightly hungover states, we walked to the grocery store to stock up on food and snacks for the day. Kieran would argue that the ready-made pies in NZ are an excellent hangover cure. We even got a pre-made lasagna for a super easy dinner.

The plan for the rest of the day was to relax and rest. After a short nap, we decided to hop on a FaceTime with our friends back home. James and Laura were throwing a NYE party, and with the timezones, it was still Dec 31st in Baltimore. We got to chat with a lot of the guests as they trickled into the party. After the call, we ate our lasagna and called it quits for the night.

Hostel: Duke Hostel

Restaurant: Otira Stagecoach

Spots:
Still Arthur’s Pass
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