Day 3 - TransAlpine Express - Christchurch to Greymouth to Franz Josef

---

So the second night is always the hardest to deal with jetlag. Chester was so tired she didn’t take her Ambien, but then she woke up at 2:30. Kirsten woke up around 4 and realized Chester was awake so they started an intense game of hangman on her phone. With some help form Chester, Kirsten got her high score. Around 5:30AM there was a slight shake of our beds. You guessed it; Chester lived through her first earthquake. Well really an aftershock that probably didn’t even register on the scale. But it still counts.

We finally got out of bed and headed over to the train station to catch the TransAlpine Express from Christchurch on the east coast of the south island across to the west side ending in Greymouth. It was about a 4.5 hour trip through the Southern Alps. A nice young couple from South Africa sat across from us and we chatted them up most of the trip. So as Chester is telling all of her stories and feeling pretty comfortable with them, she decides she can ask them a personal question. “Did you think we were gay?” Well music to our ears, they said they didn’t, or maybe they just lied. The scenery along the way was beautiful, but once we got to the west side of the range, the weather changed to cold and rain.

We arrived in Greymouth a bit after lunch and picked up our rental car and headed south the Franz Josef. The drive was about 2 hours, with a quick stop for lunch. The first hour was along the coast where the ocean was very rough with 8-10 foot waves crashing into the beach and rocks. The last hour was through the rain forest which seems weird since it was cold and rainy. Not a tropical rainforest, but full of ferms, mosses and palm type plants. We arrived in Franz Josef, checked into the hotel and headed to the store to pick up some food for our breakfast and lunch.

We had plans tomorrow to go on a helicopter hike to the Franz Josef Glacier. We called to confirm the time and as they started laughing at us, we realized we were not going as planned. Apparently the forecast is for the worst weather they get up here with gale force winds, rain, snow and some cats and dogs. So we are a bit bummed. Good for skiers, but not good for helicopters. We are reschedule for a half day glacier hike and their comment to us was it will be cold and miserable, but since we are only here 2 nights, we gotta suck it up and just do it. So tomorrow we will put on every layer of clothes we have and hike up part of the glacier.

---