We came down the mountains and hit the coast at Greymouth and headed south along the coast, stopping at Hokitika for lunch. The town was pretty full of tourists heading south, and it was a nice change to not be the only moving objects wherever we go. The town was quite sizeable and the streets strangely broad, particularly since there was no traffic. Apparently Hokitika was the centre of New Zealand's gold rush in the 1870's and was named a provincial capital in 1872. The rush of important government building construction came to a halt the following year when provinces were abolished, rightly figuring out that a mostly empty country hardly needs to be further subdivided into even more impractical units. Everybody subsequently left but the broad streets remain.
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