Part II (finally)

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I've really fallen behind on this, so apologies.

Anyway, I left last time at Franz Josef, via Westport, Greymouth etc. The glacier climb was of course something my travel companion and I were very much looking forward to. She had a blast, I probably would have been happy with the half-day climb as opposed to the full-day one. My problem really was with our group leader, who didn't particularly like (and I think the feeling was mutual), he was very sarcastic and unlike the other glacier guides (our entire group split into 4 sperate groups), he wouldn't let us stop for photographs. He also kept picking on one girl for wearing a pink rain jacket. He just would not leave her alone over it. Anyway...the guides need to occasionally carve out new paths up the glacier as the old paths are destroyed by the movement of the glacier. So two of the guides (our one included) decided to start a new path, and started going at the ice with their picks. Sadly, the ice wasn't giving way and after about an hour they gave up. For that hour, we were stopped on the ice, getting cold and wet. Up to the, I had been relatively happy but when I started getting worried I was going to lose a toe to hypothermia (ok, I was being over-dramatic slightly), I sort of gave up on it. I mean, why couldn't they have giving up sooner, instead of leaving us shivering on the ice? Anyway, that cut our time on the ice short as we had to head back down. At this point, one of our group had a broker crampon. Another wait. Then, a member of the group behind fell and our guide had to go back to check on her (he was told via radio it was serious, he found the girl up there laughing and chatting...), so it told a while to get down. By which time I was cold, wet and not happy. Anyway, to be positive we probably had a good day to do it (it still rained, but subsequent days were much wetter) and it was still an amazing experience to climb a glacier. If the wait hadn't happened, I would probably be more positive. We drove up to Fox Glacier on the way down further south, but just had a look, no climbing!!

From Fox, I had a long drive down to Wanaka, It was a horrible day (as you'd expect from a district called Westland but nicknamed Wetland), but had cleared nicely by Wanaka. Wanaka wasn't a town I know much about, other than it it was sort of the "new Queenstown" but I really liked it. I hope it doesn't become the new Queenstown as it's lovely the way it is, lots of adventure things going on, but still with a nice village feel. And unlike Queenstown, it has lots of indoor activities too, like Puzzling World, which is well worth a visit or the Cinema Paradiso, which made a nice change from the multiplex way of seeing a movie (btw the movie we saw was "The Lovely Bones", which was rubbish, but I felt it necessary to see a Peter Jackson film in NZ). But for the outdoors, the lake is lovely, and the climb over Mt Iron at sunset gives breathtaking views...even if it is a tough climb. And of course in our case it was a tough climb down, thanks to some rather bad signposting (I'm sharing the blame here...). So yes, I got us lost, but thankfully a nice man who just happened to be checking his postbox saw us wondering the road and offered us a lift back to the car. I was happy to keep walking...we were only about 3km's away!

Queenstown is probably the first place that enters everyone's mind when they think of travelling in NZ, though I have very little to say about it! Since I had no desire to bungy-jump and I'd already done my fill of adventure stuff, there really was nothing for me to do! I will say Queenstown does possibly have the best burgers in NZ (Fergburger!) and it nice to back in a lively town, where it was actually possible to get a cup of coffee after 4pm! How exciting!!

Anyway, I'll come back soon and fill on details of my weekend cruise in Milford Sound!

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