Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

We went up north to the Abel Tasman National Park and did a spectacular 7 hour hike around the entire little peninsula at the tip of the island. We went through dry land, lush forest, out onto beaches, over boulders and even down to a little area that was full of fur seals.  The seals were so cute.  There were all these little baby pups around playing with each other… really cool!!!  For some reason in NZ they call hiking, or trekking, Tramping.. we get such a kick out of that.. last time we went tramping, we were drunk and in college! (Just kidding moms and dads)!   

From abel tasman we headed down toward nelson lakes.  We had intended to do some hiking.. we mean tramping.. there but were so pooped from our hike the day before, we just ended up looking for a place to camp, and eating and reading. We ended up finding the best camping sopt.  We believe that it must be a local fishing spot, it was set right on the side of a blue/ green river with trees all around and a perfect little fire pit.  We were very happy we decided not to hike!

In the a.m. we left to head down the west coast.  We made a few stops along the way to take some more hikes.  This time, through rainforest and limestone cliffs.  It was like being back in Thailand.  It is remarkable how many different types of land they have in this little country.  Every time we take a tramp, we are in an entirely different enviroment… because from here we headed to….

The glaciers!!!  First we went to Franz Joesph Glacier.  We pretty much just checked it out from afar, because we were saving our energy for our next stop… Fox glacier.

Before we get to our Fox Glacier adventure… we have got to tell you abut the WORST camping experience so far!!  We were at a campsite near FJ G eating our dinner when these huge brown birds started circling in on us harrasing.  Ok, nothing really that strange when your camping.  When we left to do our dishes they came in and trashed our entire table…we kid u not when we tell you that those little bastards actually took off with our wine glasses.  so we took this as a lesson and put everything inside the car before we went to bed (inside the car also).  These vicious birds were trying to kill us we think.  They spent all night stomping around on our car.  We won’t lie when we say it was a little scary… like out of a horror movie.  We kept trying to get them to leave our car alone, but they wanted blood!!! We got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, (it took a lot of mental prep to build up the nerve to exit the vehicle), we had a serious stare down with one of the birds… they were not afraid!! Anyways, we realized that part of our blanket was sticking out of the trunk and they had ripped it to shreds!! It was a war zone out there!! When we woke up in the morning, we realized that they had pecked away most of the rubber around our windows and doors, and the windshield wipers were falling off.  On the good side though… they brought our wine glasses back.

So instead of spending 2 nights there, we fixed the wipers and motored down to fox glacier where we found a spot on the beach without any god-damn Kea birds.  In the a.m. we went on an all day glacier tramp.  It was more amazing then we could of imagined. We were in a group of 9 people.  The great thing about it was that there was no path we just clamped on our crampons and headed onto the ice.  The crampons are spikes that you attach to your boots so that you can walk on the ice without bustin’ arse!! It was a hard thing to get used to but eventually we were cruisin on the ice.  We hiked pretty far up the glacier to where the ice was really blue and clean.  They were all the jagged peaks and DEEP cravases.  like nothing you could imagine until you see it.  At close to the end of our hike, the rain came in that actually added more of a cool element. The dark clouds hanging over the blue ice made us feel were on a differnet planet. It is up there near the top of the list of favorite things we have done on our trip so far.  It was a different sort of easter sunday for todd!

We left Fox headed through Hasst pass to a small town called Wanaka.  We treated ourselves to a room with a bed.. and are taking a few days to just hang around this cute little town on a lake, surrounded by snow peaked mountains… until we embark on our next NZ outdoor adventure!

These are our little animal friends… this duck only had one leg, he hopped around and used his beak when he swam so he didn’t swim in circles!

This was at our perfect campsite…. the one without the birds!

These are franz josef glacier

And these are our fox glacier ones… we took sooooo many and couldn’t decide which ones to post, so you guys get a lot of them!!

This is our guide who reminded us of Joel.

And here we are this morning.. hanging in wanaka

 A little roadside humor!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.