Franz Josef Glacier and Hokitika

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The road to Franz Josef was pretty cool and we arrived just as the mist and the rain set in. The one difference between here and home is they actually know what the weather is doing so we were advised to wait it out for a day until the skies cleared. This basically involved a lot of brandy and backgammon! We did manage to nip out in the rain for a hot chocolate and a muffin and then we were very kindly given a free hot tub for an hour courtesy of spaceships - just what you need when every part of your body is frozen! After a day of being stuck in the van we were grateful to wake up to clear blue skies and made our way up to the glacier. We decided to avoid the trips up it as you only spent an hour or so on the ice and I was too chicken to go up in the helicopter. Other than taking a lot of photos of the Josef signs we didn’t really get up to much there so moved on to Hokitika to break up the long drive to Golden Bay. Hokitika was a sweet place very reminiscent of Fairborne for some reason! We found a cute campsite, did some laundry and then went to the sweetest fish and chip shop ever. We followed these signs to a little shack in the middle of nowhere that looked over the mountains and there was the sweetest chippy ever. We waited for our food and parked the van by the sea and sat and watched the sunset with some rocking blue cod and chips! (The food in New Zealand is pretty good - have you figured that out!!!) Opposite the campsite was a glow worm dell so we waited for dusk and then went and saw the glow worms, They were actually really cute, I used to love my glow worm when I was little - Mum do you still have that??? After this we went back to the site, wrapped ourselves up in multiple layers and waited for 9pm and the Glastonbury 2010 ticket lines to open! Unfortunately at two in the morning our time the lines were still engaged and my arm had started to turn a slight tinge of blue so I decided the tickets couldn’t all sell out that fast and went to sleep in the chilly Toyota. At 7.30 I was back on the line and eventually I managed to get through, they had all sold out - it obviously wasn’t meant to be! A little deflated (totally undeservedly so - just look what we have done this year - don’t mean to sound ungrateful!) we set off for the exciting looking Shantytown.

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Photos

The rainforest Retreat
Theres a reason its a RAINforest

Waterfall by the glacier
one of many

National Geographic shot
by Mr Terry Kemp!

deep in thought
with peppermint tea in hand!