Still no helihiking!

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Morning comes around quickly and surprise, surprise it’s raining…still. Now don’t get us wrong we’re not whinging but there is a difference between rain and constant soaking driving rain. We only wish we could divert it to Adelaide…or any other part of Oz really!!

We call the glacier guides and our 9.15 trip is off. They’re non-committal about the 11.45 tour but after looking at the weather on TV we’re almost 95% sure it wasn’t going to happen.

So what do you do when it’s grey and wet and windy? Yep, you go to the beach! :-) Gillespies Beach in this case. It’s a winding narrow gravel 13km road and thankfully we only come across a few cars in the opposite direction but the drive is gorgeous. It’s green rainforest vegetation which looks so amazing in the wet and is so peaceful

We get to the beach and it’s pretty wild. From the photo you’ll see that it is a pebble beach and is just littered with trees…yes trees. Not just a branch or so but the whole damn tree. We’re there long enough for a few photos and back in the dry of our car.

Back into Franz Joseph village to see how the 11.45 tour is looking but yep, it’s not happening. We had been considering doing a half-day hike to/on the glacier. This would entail a 45 minute walk to the toe of the glacier then a guide would hack a path on/through the glacier for about 1.5 hours then the 45 minute walk back. It was very enticing because we both really wanted to get close to the glacier but it is windy and the rain is heavier (is that possible) and the sky greyer then we’ve seen in the 2 days we’ve been here. Reluctantly we don’t book. Optimistically we think that we’ll be able to do something from Mt Cook.

Susan does some souvenir shopping and we’re back at our accommodation for the afternoon.

We befriend a local cat. She is very affectionate and would love dearly to come into our room and curl up in the warm. Unfortunately we leave her outside.

The weather has really set in and by the sounds of it we’re in for a rough night. A photo of our unit with Mount Cook in the background…somewhere under the cloud!

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Photos

Gillespies Beach
Wild weather didn't elude the beach either.

Mount Cook is there somewhere!
A shot of the outside of our unit at Sunset Motel. In the background is Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. What? You can't see it? No, neither could we for the rain clouds.

Friendly Cat
This little fella must've known we were missing our tribe of kitty cats.