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Published: January 15th 2007
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Hi all!
I am in Franz Joseph at the moment .. at the bottom of the glacier..but let's start from the beginning..
I left Sydney on the 3rd of January in the morning. I arrived in Christchurch in the afternoon and, after checking in the hostel,went for a walk around to visit the town known as the most ''English town of NZ''. I went through the cathedral square, the tramway, over the Avon River, the botanic Gardens' and the Belgian Berr cafe! It was a pleasant walk in a nice town. I went to eat in an asian take away.. There is quite a lot of asian restaurants in Christchurch! And then i went to bed. I needed to rest after my early morning flight.
The second day, I took the Magic bus to Kaikoura. We arrived there around midday. I decided to go for a walk along the coast as the weather was quite nice. This little town is situated next to mountains of 2660m high just next to the ocean. I also had the chance to see some seals. It was a nice walk of 4hours return. During the evening, i went to play pool with an irish guy i met in the magic bus and have a drink at the local irish pub.
On friday, i took the bus again to Picton first then to Nelson. We did several stops along the way to view the beautiful scenery. We arrived in Nelson around 3pm and went to book our trips for the next days in the Abel Tasman National Park. We wanted to do one day walk and one day Kayaking. After that, i went to see the world's most famous ring (the Lord of the Ring's one) that is kept in a jewellery shop in Nelson. That evening, i'd enjoyed a warm Jaccuzzi and a sauna that was for free in our hostel.. Isn't that cool!
On saturday, we had to take a shuttle bus to Marahau at 6.20 am in the morning. From there we took the water taxi around 9 am to go as far as Bark Bay from where we were about to start our 21km walk in the Abel Tasman National Park(a part of the total walk of 51km)! This walk is listed as one of the Great Walks of NZ. The boat dropped us on a
beautiful golden beach where we could join the track easily.. It was so nice.. i didn't imagine New Zealand like that. It looked a bit like if we were in some tropical islands.. The turquoise ocean, nice golden beaches, all the green vegetation, the little creeks,... We spend all day walking along the ocean stopping in different view points and beaches. The weather was nice and warm so that we were able to swim in the ocean. We had the time to drink a fruit juice before taking the bus back to Nelson.
I 'd enjoyed another spa pool and sauna .. it was so relaxing after that long walk!
On sunday we should have done one day kayaking trip.. but the pick up didn't came so we cancelled and anyway the weather was horrible.. windy, raining,.. no good for kayaking anyway! So we quickly packed our stuff and jumped on the magic bus heading to Greymouth. We did a couple of stops in hokitika the greenstone village and further down for a walk in Punakaiki to see the strange pancakes rocks .. We arrived around 5pm in Greymouth to relax.
On the 8th of January, we left
Greymouth to arrive around midday in Franz Jospeh village. We had booked the afternoon walk on the glacier. It consists in 5 hours walk in total and 2hours walk on the ice. The Franz Joseph glacier is quite steep and 11km long and is advancing of one meter everyday. It is one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. It is quite special to walk on this blue ice with all its different shapes. You feel like in a different world.. and the views are also really nice. We went back to the hostel cooked some dinner and watch a movie on television. The next day we stayed in Franz Joseph to do another walk. There is lots of different tracks. We decided to do a 4hours walk with, at the end, a fantastic view of the Franz Joseph glacier.
On wednesday, we took the bus from Franz Joseph to Fox Glacier. It's only half an hour drive, so we arrived quite early in the morning with an usual rainy weather for the west coast. It rains 11meters every year on the glaciers and they have 45meters of snow.
But let's have a look at the pictures..
it explains a lot too!
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