Barrytown

Another reason to travel with Stray as opposed to the other tour operators - they come to Barrytown, also known as Baz Vegas. And what a place it is.

On arrival we threw our bags down in usual discarding fashion and headed to the pub for a lovely home cooked roast. God it was good to eat some proper food for once. The evening then turned in to a 'bad taste' party, involving dragging out old, infact archaic, clothes from behind the bar for us to don and mix up. We all looked goood.

After waking up and realising Steve had fallen alseep in his full bad taste attire (unsurprisingly I must add), we headed off to a little house to meet one hell of a character who showed us how to make knives. Starting with a rod of steel, plank of wood and blocks of brass, we ended up with a set of fantastic looking knives. The process started with us hammering in to shape the blade, cutting it off to size and grinding it down to reveal the stainless and shimmering material. We then carved out a handle, and spruced it up with the brass. And after hours of grinding, lots of intervention by the man himself, more grinding and polishing, we settled down to good toasties, NZ green and moonshine whilst we marvelled at each others' knives. It was a great day with a cool souvenir to take away and show your mates.

It was bye bye Baz Vegas and off down the rugged West Coast of the South Island to Franz Josef, complete with large glacier.