Blogs from Franz Josef, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 48

Along with Fox Glacier, Franz Josef Glacier has a small population of just 321, yet its 300,000 annual visitors make it the busiest tourist stop on the West Coast. I was fortunate enough and very grateful of the opportunity to walk up to Sentinel Rock for one of the best view-points of the glacier on the day of Scenic Circle's end-of-season party. Fifteen of us had already spent an adrenalin-pumped afternoon scaring each other silly on powerful 400cc quad-bikes in the town. The whole adventure had been kept a secret, other than being put in pairs, asked to be ready to leave Fox at a certain time, and to wear casual clothes possibly suitable for wet conditions. The general consensus was that we'd be going kayaking. The quad bikes were soooo much better than I had ... read more

If only all day long bus journeys could be this picuresque! By the way... the region has had 173mm of rain and 27 land slides in the last couple of days. Damp...... read more

A long scenic drive next, from the East coast to the West, as we headed for the mountains, and more specifically, the Franz Josef glacier, a giant sloping ice river, where water gradually makes its way to the bottom but 100,000 times slower than a normal river! Our mission: to climb it. So we booked ourselves on a guided tour (that's the only way you're allowed to do them) and donned the appropriate jackets and boots. A bus took us to nearby and we walked for about an hour until we reached the bottom of the ice. Here we put talons on our boots, which are metal spikes that strap to the bottom of your shoe to prevent slipping. It's a pretty weird feeling climbing up a frozen mountain, no rocks, just very hard, compact ice! ... read more

We reached Te Anua with just enough petrol left. We stopped here just to have a coffee before heading back up to Queenstown. We passed straight through Queenstown and finally stopped in Wanaka. It was not going to be possible to do the whole journey in one day so we stopped here for the rest of the day and evening. As we had already explored Wanaka so we just had a lazy afternoon and evening involving ice cream and then boring stuff like laundry. We did manage to bump into an annoying man from Australia in our Dorm. He was in bed when we came in at about 11pm so we were so quiet but in the morning at 7am he was re-packing his entire bag into the noisiest plastic bag he could find, and despite ... read more

It’s my last day in New Zealand before heading off to the Land-of-the-roo. Since I last wrote we crossed over to the South Island and spent two weeks driving all over it. First, we headed to the Franz-Josef and Fox Glaciers and did a small hike on the toe of the Franz-Josef. That night, we stayed in Queenstown before heading for the Fjordlands National Park the next day for a boat cruise on tranquil Milford Sound. Moving on to the East, I made Scott make a stop at the Moeraki Boulders, which for some unknown reason, I became obsessed with seeing. They are a collection of circular boulders, some cracked open to reveal a hollow inside, like eggs. Very strange-looking! If you didn't know better you would swear they were dinosaur eggs. Next was Oamaru, where ... read more