Arrived... in the middle of nowhere

Greetings from Motueka... random, I know.

I'm here for a variety of reasons, mostly revolving around the fact that the central and northern South Island regions don't have too much going on.  I left Franz Josef this morning (after sleeping a solid 11 hours to recharge from that hike) with the intention of going up to Greymouth.  It was the biggest thing on my map on the west coast, but I got there even before lunchtime, and realized it wasn't a place I wanted to have to spend an idle afternoon.  Next on the map was Murchison, but I was told at a tiny spit on the map called Reefton that somehow, inexplicably, Murchison was even smaller than Reefton.

I blew through Murchison and made it all the way up to Motueka by 3:30 or so.  Found a nice little backpacker's hostel, and since there doesn't seem to be much else going on in town, I may go food shopping and cook myself dinner.  Tomorrow's looking like a drive up to Farewell Spit and Golden Bay, and then back here for another night.  Somewhere in the next five days or so will be Abel Tasman Park and Nelson before finally heading back to Picton for the ferry.

So that's the long and short of it.  "Cheers" to all you people who have been bored at work and sending me e-mails.  Always great to hear from all of you.  I'll write you back soon.