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Nelson seemed to be a fairly nice town but it was raining A LOT! so we didn't hang around very long and headed for the west coast, down to Greymouth via Puanakaiki, where there are pancake rocks and blowholes. Although the blowholes weren't blowing cos they only work at high tide and we were about four hours early - there wasn't anything else to do to kill four hours so we decided to get back in the van and keep heading south. Aiming for as close to Glacier country as we could get.
Parked up for the night at Lake Ianthe (see photo) just north of the glaciers as it was getting dark and we wanted to get the full effect of the scenery coming up to the glaciers, lots of Lord of the Rings scenes shot in them there hills!
got the Franz Josef Glacier first and decided to just do one of the shorter walks which promised "spectacualr views". It was only about 20 mins and the glaciers is pretty cool! It's advancing at about 30 cms a day at the moment (at it's peak it was advancing at a meter a day) but usually it retreats. (there were other walks that took you closer to the face of the glacier (and even some in side it - although those were cancelled the day we were there due to unpredictable river movement) but as we were a bit pushed for time we set off further south towards Fox's Glacier (about 40 mins apart). We didn't get too close to this one but what we saw of it was pretty mint.
Further south still from here to Lake Wanaka - have to be careful of that spelling! - where we spent the night on a proper site camp site! found out how to fill up the water etc! and made the most of the FANTASTIC showers!!! also got a couple of tips from an Aussie couple on the best route (ie the one with the windiest roads) to Quueenstown and they told us that there wasn't too much to do in Queenstown unless you wanted to stay up drinking til 5 in the morning....... if only we hadn't just paid 24 dollars to park here for the night we could probably have made last orders! : )
so off to Queenstown the next day where we found there was plent y to do if you were a crazy fool that liked throwing yourself out of an aeroplane or down some white water rapids (any colour come to think of it) in a dinghy, or just about anything you can think of that would normally equate to certain death. Fairly cool town to spend a day or two..... unless your tight for time like we were, ... back on the road again the next morning to Dunedin, where we went to the Albatross Centre (and saw a couple flying around.) Vicky (philistine that she is) reckons they're just seagulls with big wings! a wander through town took us to allegedly NZ's most photographed building (the train station) and the Cadbury's factory! Dunc took more photo's of the Cadbury's factory!!! and you can tell we're on a budget cos we didn't buy ANY chocolate!
We found that we'd actually got round the island quicker than we thought we might so headed back north through Christchurch and up to Hanmer Springs again so that we could go in the pools this time. Very bizarre - throwing it down and freezing but sitting in a 40 degree outside swimming pool that smells of eggs....... at least dunc said it was the pool!
anyhoo, back in Christchurch now and thought it was about time we did an update. Can't believe we're off to Oz tomorrow. all going FAR too quickly!
previous travel blog entry
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