So we left by 6:30 and drove for about 6 hours. This begins our excursion up the west coast. I gave in and I fell asleep for a few hours but I woke up with a few hours of the drive left to enjoy the scenery. You're probably getting tired of hearing me say this but we saw some of the most incredible places! Pictures and words are no where near adequate enough to describe what we saw. We were in the temperate rainforests of New Zealand driving through mountain passes coated with the famous NZ silver fern on both sides. Huge green mountains rose up on either side, with their majestic peaks being lost in the mist and clouds. Snow covered peaks would poke up through the green here and there.
Since NZ doesn't really have highways or interstates like we do in the US most of our travel has been on two lane back roads. We don't really have to worry about big semi trucks because the country is so small. The only thing I really don't like is the passing on the bridges. Most of their bridges are super small, just over small streams and rivers but they are only one lane wide. So they have give way (yield) signs and you have to make sure no cars are coming from the other direction before venturing across the bridge. It sounds simple enough but a lot of the roads are pretty windy and it's not always easy to tell if another car is coming or not. Just part of the adventure I guess.
Anyway we arrived at our destination around 12, which was enough time to eat lunch and check in to our hostel. We stayed in a place called the glow worm cottage- a pretty sweet hostel if you ask me. The guy at the desk was from England and he was super nice. It was funny though because he asked us where we were going to go for drinks later that night and we told him that the party life wasn't really our thing. :)
We regrouped and met back up at 2 for our next adventure which was the Frans Josef Glacier. There were so many options for us from helicopter rides to ice hikes to a hike up to the glacier. We opted just for the hike up to the glacier due to lack of time and funds. So we put on our wrist bands, hard core hiking boots, and rain jackets provided by the company. We had two tour guides one kiwi guy and the other was a guy from England. The kiwi was nice but he was a bit full of himself. The other guy actually graduated in the study of glaciers and he's been in many different countries studying the movement and flow of glaciers. He had a lot of cool things to tell us.
We hiked through the bush for a bit and then we were able to hike around parts of the glacier. It was really cool! The part that we hiked on was called dead ice meaning it used to be a part of the glacier as recently as a few months ago but the glacier is retreating back up the canyon. The glacier ends in a decent sized water fall. The Maori called the place frozen tears of a goddess who lost her one love when he fell down a mountain to his death. She was so heartbroken that she sat on top of the mountain and cried and cried for years on end. As a tribute to her the gods froze her tears and created the glacier. It was so beautiful! One of the guides uncovered some of the glacier and and we got to lick it. It tasted like cold water. I know what a surprise! :).
On our hike back we passed by a part of the glacier and heard a crack and then a sound like a gunshot. It was so crazy because you would have thought that a whole section of the glacier had fallen off. But no it was only a small piece. The ice is just so densely packed together and that is what makes it so loud when it falls. Our guide (the good one) told us that he once heard a huge section of the glacier break and fall and it sounded like lightening. Don't worry we were far away from the piece that fell down. We were in no danger.
That night we returned back to the hostel. We had some of their free soup (not bad) and bread and we had a chance to do some laundry. Along with our hike we could use our wristbands to enter the glacier pools. They were thermal pools that heated up the glacier water and that were extremely warm and perfect after a long day in the car and hiking. There were three different pools and each one was a few degrees warmer than the last. It felt amazing!
After a nice shower we had no trouble falling asleep on the soft comfy beds. :)
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