Saturday, Feb 28 Franz Joseph to Wanaka

We had a very nice drive from FJ to Wanaka. The skies were cloudy, but no rain. As we headed south the road continued over many more one-way bridges, some suspension bridges, some truss, and some just cement. At least half of the bridges are one-way bridges, but we haven't seen any more that share the railroad tracks. It was interesting to note that the suspension bridges often had a sign that heavy trucks should cross only one at a time. Every so often the road took us along the ocean coast. In California these coastal views would be worth a million but here they are so remote that no one cares. The landscape continued just as we had seen most of the west coast, with mountains, mostly rounded at their top and covered with luscious green vegetation/trees (not a pine forest, probably beech trees and ferns). Many rivers come out of the mountains, each of which the road must cross. At times we drove through rain forest with many ferns and moss covered trees arching over the road. After Haast, the last town on the coast, the road turned east and headed up through Haast Gorge and Haast Pass. At Haast Gorge the river looked more like a Sierra mountain river, in that it was only about 20 yards wide and full of large boulders, and fast, clear, blue water pounding its way down hill. The mountains began to look sharper, rockier and less rounded.

Fantail Falls, near the Haast Gorge, with hundreds of cairns (stacked rocks) people had built on the river bed. I built one too to commemorate our visit.

We came through the pass and to the northern end (the start) of Lake Wanaka. The lake is about 27 miles long, but only about 10 miles wide, formed by an ancient glacier, and had a resemblance of Lake Tahoe, but not as wide and with only one town along the lake shore (Wanaka). Mountains surrounded the lake. This time of year no snow on the mountain peaks, but post cards show beautiful sunny days with snow caped peaks.

After our relaxing 5 hour drive, we arrived in Wanaka. We checked into the hotel. Ken noticed that the local airport was having an air show, so of course that's what we did next. However when we arrived at the airport it had ended. We did get their in time to see a group of ski-divers just landing. After the airport we went to town, walked around and had an early dinner at Relishes Restaurant. Very nice. I had salmon and Ken had a mushroom fettuccine dish. We have found the food in NZ to be fantastic. I was worried because of the similarity to England, but they have figured out how to do great food in NZ.

Back at the hotel, Ken took a sauna, I uploaded photos. Today's photos were not very good due to the overcast skys.

It started raining, hard, while we were at dinner. It’s forecast to rain tomorrow also. So instead of sunning ourselves at the Wanaka beach, we plan to take a drive to the local ski hill, named Treble Cone. Summer now, but we can get an idea of what their skiing might be like. A month ago I would have said NZ skiing was not much, but after seeing the mountains around here, I have a total respect for the excellence that NZ skiing must be.

Friday, Feb 27 - The Glaciers

Don't cross the yellow rope or you will DIE. We crossed and had a great (safe) adventure.

The path to the glaciers walking through rain forest that opens up to the glacier.

Franz Joseph Glacier.

Artistic Franz Joseph Glacier.

Watch for falling rocks Ken.
Swing bridge at Fox Glacier.
My favorite photo of the whole trip. The glacial mountains (Mt. Cook) in the background.

We went to bed last night to pouring rain. This morning when we woke up the sky was mostly blue and sunny with just a few clouds. Looking out our front window we could see the snowy peak of Mt. Cook. Yes, the weather gods are on our side today.

Today we did Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers, both NZ national parks. These were very unlike visiting a US National park. There was no entrance fee and no crowds! We found a parking space with no problem.

We started at Franz Joseph glacier. There was a nice gravel walking path leading us to the glacier. The start of the path was through a green deciduous rain forest area with lots of ferns and overgrown bushes and trees, which made an archway or tunnel over the path. Shortly we came to a viewing point right at the edge of the glacial river bed. What a view! We could see up the river bed (another very wide gravel river bed with a milky, light blue, river meandering down the middle). The forested path dumped us out onto this gravel river bed leaving us to make our own pathway through it toward the glacier. We trekked our way through gravel and rocks of all sizes, from fine silt and pebbles to rocks the size of half a car, but most were the size of a throw pillow. The striations on most of the rocks were very different than anything I’ve seen in the US. The rocks had thin layers pancaked together. The layers were only about 1/8th inch thick. As the water wore down the layers they wore at different rates leaving the edges of the many of the rocks look like petrified wood. In addition to these rocks, there were also quartz and granite rocks, but all well worn.

The glacier was quite a ways out from where we started walking – maybe two miles. After about a mile we came to a rope across the area with signs warning not to go beyond the rope for fear of falling rocks, high water, and other “hazards.” Most people stopped here and took their share of pictures. From what we could see the area beyond the rope was the same as the area on the “safe” side of the rope. We could see that many people had crossed the rope and ventured closer to the glacier. While we were contemplating whether we should also venture on, a tour group came through and went right on through the rope. The literature we read said the tours take you either up to the terminus of the glacier or onto the glacier. But of course you had to pay big bucks for such special access. The signs did not prohibit access, just warned of dangers, so we proceeded to go beyond the rope. We walked about 1/3 a mile and came to a point where a cliff wall came straight down into the water, so we couldn’t pass through. However we knew the tour groups were getting through, and we had seen them climb up into the wooded/brushy area above the river bed bank. We decided to stop for our picnic lunch on a large flat rock. While eating, a couple people came out of the woods right onto the rock we were sitting on. Well hidden, was a path that lead up into the woods then paralleled the river again. After our lunch we venture up this path. It was more like a small creek with flowing water. We were able to keep our feet dry because plenty of rocks to step on. This was a steep climb up this creek bed. The tour groups had strung climbing ropes from tree to tree along this creek-bed path to assist in climbing up the rocks. After a short while we decided to turn around and head back to the rocky, river bed.

We returned to the car, and it was only 2:00, so we decided to head to Fox Glacier, which is about 10 miles south of Franz Joseph Glacier. At Fox Glacier, they had two entrances – the glacier access or the view. First we went to the “view.” We started down a path through a very damp rain forested area. The brush was do dense we couldn’t see 10 feet into the woods. Trees were dripping with moss. We haven’t been to the Lord of the Rings area yet, but this must be what it is like. Must have been 99% humidity – my hair became one big frizzy curl. After about a half mile of down hill, we came to the glacial river from the Fox Glacier, and an old rickety suspension “swing” bridge over the river. This bridge was more interesting/fun than seeing the glacier. It wasn’t until we got to the other side that a sign said “caution, no more than 5 people on the bridge at a time.” Well, I guess we had to cross back – it didn’t collapse on the first crossing so I guess it wasn’t going to collapse on the way back. Part way back Ken noticed that the suspension cable was very rusted and should be replaced, so he stopped jumping and swinging the bridge.

After this walk we drove to the glacier “access” parking lot. This got us much closer to the Fox Glacier terminus than we could get at the Franz Joseph glacier terminus, so we got a much better look, close up, at a glacier.

After Fox Glacier we stopped in the small village of Fox Glacier for a pizza, early dinner on our way back to our hotel at Franz Joseph village.

It was a beautiful day. I’m not sure how warm it got, but it was t-shirt weather in the sun, and a light sweater was nice in the shade of the rain forest. It’s almost 8:00 pm and I’m sitting on our patio writing this. The sun has not set yet, and I believe will set about 9:00. It has been rising about 7 am.

Note to Robin – the restaurants around here all have gluten free options identified on their menus! And the little grocery store in town has a huge selection of gluten free (rice) crackers.

Photo of one way bridge with Train tracks

Thursday, Feb 26 - TransAlpine Train

We’re off to Greymouth on the Trans-Alpine train which runs from Christchurch to Greymouth. Met a family from Ottawa Canada. They’ve been traveling for 4 months around the world, having been in NZ for a month already. They said a month is not long enough to see NZ. They have 3 kids ages about 10-15 and the mom is home schooling them along the way.

The train ride was quite nice. Departed Christchurch at 8:15 AM and arrived in Greymouth at 1:00. The views were beautiful. First we went through the industrial part of Christchurch, then to the countryside. Lots of sheep and cows, some horses in pastures along the tracks. Fields were separated by tall rows of trees or very tall hedge-rows. We followed most of the time along a river that flows out of the mountains. All the rivers around here are very wide and shallow and the water meanders in several figure "8s" through this very wide shallow, flat river bed. The river bed is wide because a couple times a year the water actually fills up the whole width due to heavy rain in the mountains causing the water to bring silt and gravel down from the mountains. The water is also very clear and mostly not glacial looking, however there are some parts that do look glacial.

At the top of the pass, Arthurs Pass, they let us off the train for 5 minutes to look around. There was nothing there but the train station. Back on board and under way, we soon came to the longest of the 19 tunnels we went through. This one was 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) long, and reported to be the 7th longest tunnel in the world. On the Christchurch side of the tunnel the weather was nice, on the Greymouth side, it was foggy, with low clouds that hung on the mountain peaks and threatened rain.

In Greymouth we had lunch at a little place in town. I had a panini that was very similar to the one Florian serves at Hally K’Ono. This one was chicken, brie and apricot jam, but tasted just like Florian’s chicken, brie, pear panini. Maybe she’s from New Zealand?!

In Greaymouth we rented a car and started driving south along the West Coast of NZ. Ken drove and his left side of the street driving came right back to him since living in England 24 years ago. The roads are nice and in good shape. The only thing that was really different is that many of the bridges crossing the rivers (plenty of them) were one lane bridges AND at least two of the bridges we crossed were also shared with the train track! Yes, one lane shared by two opposing directions of traffic plus a train! We didn’t see any trains near these bridges but all indications were they are active tracks.

It started raining about half way to Franz Joseph (our stop for tonight). The whole drive from Greymouth to Franz Joseph was about 2 ½ hours of beautiful cloud shrouded mountains and fields.

After checking into our hotel we drove into town, 3 km down the road. Still raining. Town is one block long, with two restaurants, a small grocery store, two gift shops, and several tour outlets for helicopter and guided glacier hike tours. Due to the low clouds we have seen no sign of a glacier yet, but heard tomorrow might clear up a bit. I hope so, since the post cards really make it look amazing. Even if the rain doesn’t stop, we’ll probably try a walk to the base of the glacier, just to say we did. Rain doesn’t seem to stop people around here. We have rain jackets, but maybe it's time to buy rain pants, too.

Wednesday, Feb 25 - Christchurch

We made it to Auckland! We lost a day, and it’s now Wednesday. NZ is a day minus 3 hours ahead of California. They are one of the first countries to be on the west side of the International Date Line.

We never left the airport in Auckland and flew directly from there to Christchurch, which is on the middle of the east coast of the south island. (Auckland is on the north coast of the north island.) Checked into our hotel, The Rydges, by 1:30 PM, now time for a nap since sleeping on the plane was worthless. Actually, Ken is napping, and I’m writing.

Christchurch is a very pretty city. It has a very English feel to it, and actually that was apparently done on purpose when the town was first established. They imported native English trees, and kept the English architecture for homes and other buildings. In the center of the city there are several more modern buildings mixed in (by modern, I mean built in the 1970’s instead of looking “old English”). Our hotel is one of those, but they have upgraded it recently and it has all the 2009 modern conveniences and style. We’re on the 10th floor and probably one of the tallest buildings in this downtown Christchurch area. Across the street from the hotel is the River Avon, and on the other side of the river is a huge, beautiful park. When Ken wakes up we’ll take a walk and check out the area and find a place for dinner.

Took a walk along the River Avon. It is really quaint with ducks and flowers along the banks. Every block where the street crosses the river is a cute old bridge. We walked around this part of Christchurch for a while. Every other store is a gift shop, a restaurant with cafe style seating on the sidewalk, or very upscale women's shops. We also found a great internet cafe (there right now posting this), and hope we are so lucky in every town we visit. After this we're heading out to find dinner at one of the cafes.

Tomorrow we board the train bright and early and head west to the west coast.
More next time...

Monday, Feb 23 - California to Auckland

Finally our departure day arrived. Super Shuttle was all lined up to take us to the airport. The only problem was that it had been raining for the past few days and flights had been delayed for up to 2 hours, which meant we’d miss our connection.
Good sign #1 – Super Shuttle showed up 15 minutes early and we were the only passengers. Good sign #2 – Our airplane was coming in from Hawaii and had already landed by the time we arrived at the airport so no delays. Yea! We had no problem making our connection.

Packed and Ready

We're packed and ready to go!
Managed to get everything into one suitcase with room to spare for souveniers.

Link to photos

Here's a link to our Picasa photo site where we will post our photos.
Enjoy...
http://picasaweb.google.com/nzmaples/NewZealand?feat=directlink