Franz Josef Drive

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We got up early for our drive and rang the bell at reception to check out, the chick was nowhere to be seen and after speaking to another punter we were told that she doesn't ever show face before 09:30, now that was no good to us as we paid a $20 key deposit and I wasn't leaving without it, helpfully the other punter offered us the $20 and said she'd hand the key in when reception opened and get the money back, we thanked her and hit the road.

On the long road to Greymouth, about half-way, Fiona started panicking that the key deposit was in fact only $10, there's nothing we can do now though, so if we ripped you off by $10 in Nelson please get in touch so Fiona can appologise.

The road wasn't bad on the way to Greymouth and we reached half way about 5 hours after we left, there really was nothing to do in town so we ate a quick lunch and got back on the road, 3 hours later we were in Franz Josef so someone had been telling porkey's, now I know I'm not the slowest driver in the world but I can't turn a 2 day journey into 8 hours, either everyone exaggerates distances here or they all drive about 50KM/hr, both are stupid.

We reached the hostel at 4pm to be told we didn't have a reservation, then we did but it was for tomorrow and the day after, not today and tomorrow, we were sure that we'd booked the right days and asked to use the computer to check our e-mail reply from them, it turns out we were right and they had funked up the booking, nothing they could do though so they said, apart from put us in dorms and give us some money off, I couldn't be arsed arguing with them and went accross the road to the Montrose Backpackers, they had a room so we took it, as it turned out it was really nice and the original one was a bit of a dive, everything always works out in the end.

It was a lovely evening so we went out to wander the township, it's only one street, 1 shop, 1 bar and about 5 backpacker places, the only thing to do in town is climb the glacier, so we booked a climb, tomorrow at 8am, an 8 hour trek with 6 hours on the ice, they say anyone can do it but by looking at the video playing in the shop it doesn't look easy, it's also bloody expensive at $140 but as there's nothing else to do and seeing as we got out of skydiving in Taupo because it was $400 we went ahead with this, got a carry out to watch the rugby 7's from Wellington, Scotland beat England before losing to Australia in the final, good enough.

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Photos

Franz Josef Glacier
We're not seriously going to climb this are we?