Blogs from Franz Josef, West Coast, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania

Childhood Memories In an old, dusty photo album at home there is a black and white picture of an expanse of tidal mudflats, water and some hills. A childlike arrow has been drawn on the photo, pointing down. Under the arrow is a white dot, a blob, an indeterminate something. I took the photo, so I know the blob is a white heron, or kotuku, which many years ago was a rare visitor to the Hokianga Harbour, in Northland. For a few days or a week or two (I can’t remember) the bird was a topic of conversation in the district. Most of the discussion centred on where it had come from. The consensus was that it had been blown across the Tasman in a storm, all the way from Australia, and was now feeding in ... read more

You might remember a while back I mentioned that I'd joined a scheme called WWOOFing - Willing Workers On Organic Farms. The scheme allows travellers to go and work on farms in exchange for food, accomodation and farming experience. I joined up and managed to find a nice sounding dairy farm on the West Coast of the South Island in a little village called Whataroa. The job description was ''Milking cows, shearing sheep, some horse riding and general farm chores'' I decided it sounded okay so I set off to give it a go. When I arrived at the farm I met the family and the two other WWOOFers that were working there. There was Pete the farmer, his wife Sonia, their daughter Laura and a couple from the Czech Republic called Ivana & Joseph. First ... read more

I have been very fortunate lately to have had the opportunity to travel for the past couple of weekends. I spent Easter weekend with a few friends in the Fiordland. We stayed in Te Anau, which is a small town that borders a lake. For two of the days, we hiked part of the Kepler Track and splurged for the other day to go sea kayaking in Milford Sound. After I recovered from the 6:45 am departure, the day went perfectly. For an area of the country known for insane amounts of rain (over 7m per year) we really lucked out and had a perfectly sunny day, not a cloud in site. The sea kayaking was a great way to see the sound (the other option being on a boat with hundreds of other people). Not ... read more

Day 14: I left Wellington early to catch the first ferry with everyone! I herd that the view from the ferry was really nice but since I was feeling pretty ill from the motion sickness I spend pretty much the whole 3 and a half hours sleeping which sucked! And then pretty much right after we got off the ferry we had to get back on the bus and drive for another 3 hours, so I pretty much felt ill the whole day, no good! When we got to Nelson I went for a walk around town. Its not at all like Wellington, from what I saw it just felt like a normal little town so I was not to sad that I was only spending one night there. When we got back to the hostel ... read more

Into our final stretch back home we stopped at the Franz Joseph Glacier. The glacier is located on the West Coast of the South Island. It is unique in the fact that it descends from the Southern Alps to just 200 metres above sea level amidst the greenery and lushness of a temperate rainforest. The area surrounding the glacier is designated a World Heritage Site. We plan to spend a full day hiking up the glacier at some point, but the kids did not have the reserves to take on the climb this time. However, I talked everyone in to "stretching their legs" with a short walk to get a better look at the glacier. I sold it on the basis of a 30 minute walk, but it turned into a couple of hours. The weather ... read more