New Zealand Day 9

Day 9 – Sunday 9th May 2010 Today is Mothers Day and we are going to walk to the glacier! We didn’t book a guided tour for the glacier walk because:

1. We have booked a helicopter flight over Tasman, Fox and Franz Josef glaciers for Wednesday morning. The flight includes a landing on Mt Cook!

2. We discovered that you could do the same walk to the foot of the glacier on your own and it’s free!

Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers are easily accessible to the public and are stunning to look at. We parked in the car park of Franz Josef and set out on the walk.

The walk takes 1 hour and 20 minutes round trip and from the base of the Glacier you can view the whole 12 kms of the Franz Josef Glacier.

The distance is so deceptive and the height of the glacier is deceptive. It wasn’t until a tour started walking up on the glacier and you see just how small the people are that you realise just how big the glacier is!

There are many water falls along the walk and you can walk up to the river that flows out from the glacier.

Big chunks of ice that have broken off the glacier are just sitting in the river melting very very slowly.

It was a fantastic walk and I am so glad that we did it!

We stopped for lunch by a lake off the main road where unfortunately we were bitten by sand flies! Nasty buggers!

We drove along the coast to Haast, there are fantastic views and you can spot seals along the beach and the rocks.

At Haast we turned in land to head south East towards Queenstown.

Beautiful waterfalls

Beautiful mountains

Beautiful lakes

We had to get to Queenstown by nightfall as we had flights booked for the morning to Milford Sound! Unfortunately this meant we were driving at night and we rushed through Wanaka and Cardrona Ski fields. Sometimes I think this might have been a good idea because the road coming down the mountain from Cardrona into Arrowtown was rather steep and very windy, probably best I couldn’t see the drop off the side of the road!

We made it and spotted a Burger King, so that was dinner! Well we were travelling with a child and we had to keep him happy!

We found a motorhome park close to the airport and called it a day! Franz Josef to Queenstown 354kms.

xx

New Zealand Day 8

Day 8 – Saturday 8th May 2010

It rained and rained all day today. We drove through Arthurs Pass and despite the bad weather we saw lots of beautiful scenery, we just didn’t get out of the car to take any photos. I am not sure that the photos would have turned out so good even if we tried!

The road through Arthurs Pass is the Alpine Highway and we travelled through Castle Hill Village (it was at this stage of the trip that we realised we were running short on fuel). We discovered that Castle Hill Village was purely a small Ski Resort/Village with chalets and not much else.

As we travelled further and further we started to pray for the fuel to last until we arrived at a petrol station. Not that running out of fuel would have been the worst thing to happen it really wouldn’t have been very pleasurable!

Thankfully we arrived at Arthurs Pass, another cute touristy town in the alps and an ideal base for those wanting to snow ski! Here we finally found a petrol bowser, just the one in front of the cafe/tourist centre/rest stop. We had to go in and leave our credit card with the people behind the counter before we could put fuel in and unfortunately a bus full of tourists had just arrived and the line was huge!!!

After paying an excessive amount for our fuel, drinking coffee, using the rest rooms and grabbing even more brochures, we were finally on the road again!

Not far out of Arthurs Pass there are some amazing views, the Via ducts are definitely worth stopping to see (sorry no photo) and we did manage to stop and get a photo of this old bridge near some old mines. You can look closer at the mines but we didn’t, too wet and cold!

The surprising thing about this day was that it was the most excited I had seen Nicholas during our driving. He was absolutely enthralled with all of the water! The rivers were gushing and the plains were flooded in places and he couldn’t get over the amount of water everywhere! After thinking about it a bit I realised that parts of Australia have been n drought for most of the last 10 years so he really hasn’t seen a lot of water in rivers or in fields. He hasn’t had the opportunity to play under the sprinkler or the hose for the last 6 years so he really doesn’t remember anything different!!

Our plan had been to head straight for the west coast however the highway had flooded and the road was closed so we detoured slightly and travelled north to Greymouth and then down along the coast to Franz Josef.

We stopped in Hokitika for a late lunch and a look around. We were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of Mt Cook for the first time when the clouds cleared and it was an awesome sight. Standing at the beach looking at the highest Mountain in New Zealand in all its snow covered glory!

Hokitika is home to some of New Zealand’s finest jade, there are many stores to browse through and lots of beautiful jewellery to admire or purchase!

The coastal road was lovely and the weather had cleared up.

We arrived at Franz Josef in the late afternoon and decided to stop for the night.

Springfield to Franz Josef 356kms

xx