The West Coast

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Along the west coast we stopped at a tiny little village called Barrytown. There is nothing else there other than the pub/guest house we stayed at really and we had a v random fancy dressed night…
That is the disadvantage of Stray actually is stays in some v random places and you have no choice but stay there too. The cross dressing night was actually quite fun but the fact that we had no choice but attend put me off a little.

We then stopped at a few sights for photos along the way to Franz Joseph Glacier.

Franz Joseph Glacier, one of the few hundred in the area, is one of the biggest and most accessible and so is the one that most people go to visit.
I did a full day hike up it. The glacier is moving about 1.5m day so always changing and the guides had to hack steps into it as we went.
The hour walk to get to the bottom the glacier was probably the most tiring bit of the day. We were kitted out with lovely waterproof coast, trousers, gloves, hat, boots, crampons etc. and even with that I was still pretty cold, especially whenever we stopped walking. We walked through lots of ice caves and got about ¾ of the way up the glacier.

After Franz Joseph we stoppped in another random town for the night, where we had Kareoke and I then stopped at Wanaka after that.
This is a really lovely little town on Lake Wanaka and surrounded by Mt Aspiring National Park. It had a real alpine ski resort feel to it. I didn’t do much while there but it was a really nice place to just wander around and chill out in for a few days. You can see the top of a glacier, over the lake and the tallest mountain in the area is Mt Aspiring which also overlooks the lake.
Wanaka is pretty close to Queenstown as is apparently what Queenstown used to be like before it got so popular and toursity. It would be a lovely location to come to in winter and do some skiing from.

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Photos

Kate and I knew the same dance to Like a Prayer!!
we were in time and everything.. it was impressive!