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Published: June 21st 2008
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Peter's Pool
So where is Mary's? Anyone get it? Apparently I am not very funny. On the way up to the glacier Hellloooooo Canada! And surrounding areas...
Well, we have arrived in the adventure capital of the world. Last time on Kim and Dennis Down Under.....
We got to Franz Josef and saw a great big glacier. It was very chilly at night there, but we managed. In fact, the second night we were walking around in shorts and sandals because everything else was in the wash! People gave us crazy looks, especially the ones burrowed in parkas, toques, and mitts. Haha, you thought we were just brave, but nope, just out of clothes!
Franz Josef was really neat. We took a bus up to a hiking path that we went up about 3/4 until we realized it didn't actually go to the glacier. Poop. It just gave a good view. It was called the Alex Knob hike. Supposed to be 8 hours return, but we did 3/4 in under 2 hours return soooo.... yay us! Then we hiked to Douglas Swing bridge, then up to as far as we could get to the glacier without guides. It was very pretty. HUGE! It is one of the only glaciers in the world this close to the ocean, only 19 km
Franz Josef Glacier
This is as close as we could go, or at least as close as recommended. away! Also, it, along with Fox glacier 30 kms away, are actually expanding not retreating like most glaciers currently. But you should have seen the size of it in the 1800's!!!!!! WAYYYYYYY bigger! Where we were standing, it was higher than us, and from our pictures you'll see how far away that is! Although I should say, Dennis wanted to go further than where we did, because he thought (and I'm sure he was right) that it was pretty safe to go, cause they were concerned about the creeks in flooding and the creeks were... not flooding. So we probably could have gone right up, but at this point, I was freezing and wanted to go home. Although that was still a 2.5 hike away.
All of our hikes were absolutely gorgeous. It was perfect green rainforests everywhere. All trees native to New Zealand are evergreen, that is, stay green all year around, even the leafy ones. ANy tree that isn't, are the ones that shed their leaves. So stuff like oaks and willows. So the rainforest had barely any trees that were not evergreen!
On our hike back to the town, we had to cross a few...
well.. creeks! It was pretty much a creek over slippery rocks and the only guide they gave was a yellow or orange triangle that told you were the path started up again! It was fun to try and get across without getting wet. Dennis was the guide, not me! I tend to choose poor choices in that situation 😊. Either way we had a great time! And when we got home we did laundry, ate, and went into our hostel's nice and toasty sauna..... mmmmmmmmm....
We caught our bus to Queenstown, which was 8 hours, but I SWEAR it could have been like 6 if we hadn't of stopped so many times. I must say, the views were gorgeous, but I really hate bus rides and just wanted it to be over with. And its pretty hard to fall asleep when you stop every 40 minutes. But we saw some incredible stuff on the trip here, including Fish river, which has a pool in a cave where in the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Sam and Frodo and Faramir find Gollum with a fish. That was very cool. We also went to some orchards, some beautiful lakes,
Ship Creek
One of our many stops on the way to Queenstown. A beautiful little creek and beach where a ship ran aground, hence the name. and stopped at two beaches that had penguins and dolphins, unfortunately, none came out to play. In Queenstown, our hostel is right on the lake and the mountains across from us are the Misty Mountains from Lord of the Rings!
We are doing a two day blog this time so now we are talking about today, the 21 of June. Happy Anniversary Dean and Elaine by the way!!!! We tried to sleep in a bit today to catch up on some sleep but our hostel is very noisy, argggg!!!! So we slept less than ideal although Kim definitely had it worse. SHe is unfortunately not as heavy a sleeper as am I. AH well, we got up and headed to Bob Weighs for breakfast where we had some delicious hot sandwiches and french toast. Yum Yum, very fitting considering the title!
We decided for our "extreme" in Queenstown we are going to do some street luging!!!! We took the Gondola up to the top of a "mountain", although I think I would call it more of a hill compared to our standards, very steep just not very high. And there were sheep grazing on the way up. We
Fish River
Ring any bells of some movie about a ring? This is where they find Gollum! then got to the top and soaked up the amazing view of Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding mountains. SOOOO gorgeous!!!! We then seen the really cool luge track and got all excited! We took a chair lift up further to the top of the luge runs and were quickly instructed on how to go and how to stop. After our two seconds of instruction, we headed down on the easy track and LOVED IT!!!! SUper fun! A little fish tailing on the fresh skiff of ice/snow on the track. We hurried up and ran down the advanced track a couple more times. SO awesome! Kim with all of her adrenaline and excitement was ready to go parasailing off the mountain. But at $200 a shot, we decided to watch instead. We found the coolest chess set ever, sheep versus kiwi birds. But it was so big to lug around so we are going to try and find it online and get it mailed home!
We headed down to the Kiwi wildlife park where there was real live kiwi birds (most places they are only stuffed) and a whole bunch of other native kiwi birds. THe kiwi's were super cool!
Lake Hawea
Another stop on our road trip! THey are super cute and waddle around searching for food. They had a conservation show where they had some of the animals out and flying overhead as they talked about the animals and the various conservation efforts. We then got to go see them feed the kiwi's! On a side note, these kiwi's seem to like to introduce all sorts of predators to eliminate pests and accidentally kill off other animals they love. So now they encourage the murdering of possums and stouts (ferret for lack of better description). Odd.
We then walked around town and the peninsula before coming here to write our blog. TOnight, we are off to mass, get food for the next few days, eat some supper and then get ready for Milford SOund tomorrow. Both of us are sooooooooooooooo excited for it! Every picture we have seen is so beautiful!!!! The next time we talk to you we will either be in Mount Cook or Christchuch.
Hope everything is great back home! GO sunshine and go garden and especially our lawn!!! YEah!!!
Love you all and can't wait to see you!
Dennis and Kim
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Marilyne
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What a treat!
I am thoroughly enjoying your blogs --- this is about as close as I will get to going "down under" . Take care! Love to you both!