Land of the Long White Cloud (4)

 

28th February

Today we travelled to  Greymouth – aptly named as the sky was a little overcast and did nothing for the view.

We took a taxi from the Camp site at around 4.00pm  to visit the shops and go on a brewery tour at around 6.00pm. It was Saturday afternoon so as you would expect all (yes all) of the shops were closed. Luckily we found an establishment selling our other beer of choice, Speights Gold Medal Ale and that passed an hour away until we went off to the brewery for the main event. The tour of the brewery was interesting if a little brief but the tasting session made up for it – 7 beers are brewed by Monteith’s and we had the chance to sample them all. As Carol is not a great lover of beer I had more of some samples than others and with the 2 additional “pour your owns” I was feeling quite pi$$ed by the time we left. Then it was back to the pub we visited earlier for something to eat (and drink) and to round the day off. It rained heavily overnight although this had cleared by the morning

1st March

Woke up to rain this morning. It had stated overnight and on the journey down to Franz Joseph Glacier the weather was quite poor. When we arrived at the site we saw a film about the glacier and then decided to use the facilities on site cook us up a mighty good chilli, which as I write this is looking across the table from me in the Kitchen/dining area. The plant is to visit the Fox glacier tomorrow as the weather is due to clear and do a valley walk. Then on Tuesday we are hoping to do the helihike that we booked at 09.30 with a plan to get some miles under our belt enroute to Wanaka.

 

2nd March

Well we did the Fox glacier walk and the weather was good for us. The walk itself was great and we had a very experienced and knowledgeable guide (Rodger) who took us (on foot) up to the glacier through the rain forest where we fitted “cramp ons”  that allowed us to go onto the ice. It was an invigorating 4 hour walk that left us somewhat weary at the end of it. The Glacier is surprisingly “dirty” with rocks, debris and even some sand from the Australian desert. The hot spells over the past few years in Australia is one of the reasons why the glacier has actually increased in size, although it is believed that over the next few years it will probably contract a little. These changes are quite normal, but it was mentioned that the rate at which the glacier is changing size has accelerated as a consequence of global warming.

By the end of the day the weather had picked up nicely and the forecast had confirmed that Tuesday was going to be a good day for the heli-hike.

3rd March

Today the weather was great. The sun shone and the temperature was comfortably in the 20’s. Carol had enjoyed the walk on the Fox the day before but didn’t fancy the helicopter ascent to the Franz Joseph. The trip was short, around 10 mins but we started the hike at around 900 metres and this was a good start after yesterdays trip!!

We spent around 2.5 hours on the ice before being picked up and returned to base and it was truly amazing. The ice flow was really impressive and our guide a young, fit and quite scary lead us over mini cravasse’s and through ice caves and across frozen ice lakes. Needless to say the camera was working overtime and I have already gotten through 2 x 16 GByte cards and 1 x 4 GByte card.

Met Carol on my return ate some lunch and started off for Wanaka, which was quite a distance for late start but none the less we made it. The trip down was quite incredible with regard to the scenery that we saw. stopped and photographed. The Haast pass in particular was amazing and by now we have taken to keeping my camera in the cab with us so that we can more easily stop and nip out to take the odd photo. We reached Wanaka tired but content at around 6.30 pm, booked into the site promptly left to take the camper down to the lake and watched the local sailing club pottering around whilst drinking beer and eating a burger at the pub on the lakeside. Sailing was boring though – in all of the time I watched them no one capsized at all – NZ girlies!!

We decided that despite its alcoholic charms tomorrow we were bound for Queenstown. 

4th March

Queenstown is known as the adventure capital of NZ and it’s worthy of the title. In addition to being a lively vibrant place it’s the home for many of the extreme sports such as jet boating, rafting “bungying” and sky diving. Not keen on any of those we settled for the cable car, steam boat trip on the lake and a very nice Pizza at a waterfront bar.  The weather was hot again today and I keep getting bitten despite using copious amounts of bug spray. It must be true that bugs are attracted to sweet things…

5th March

Today albeit a little belatedly we arrived at Dunedin – mainly due to the photographic interludes I mentioned previously. This “city” is the 3rd largest in NZ but is considerably smaller than Wellington and Auckland. The weather was fine on the journey down and as I write this at around 7.00pm it is starting to get a little cooler. We only had a few hours to explore this place today but we are here for a couple of nights so there is plenty of time tomorrow.  it was founded by the Scotish people and Dunedin is the ancient name for Edinburgh.  We took the opportunity to stock up on food and beer and I think it will be Lasagne tonight for tea.