Alice’s Gap Year Travels

A small bus picked us up at 8am and after a couple more pick-ups there was 5 of us on the bus ready to make our journey to meet the bigger bus which was coming from Nelson as everyone does different routes. After lunch we settled onto the bus and arrived in the tiny town of Westport by early evening, it was a quiet night with everyone cooking dinner then chilling in the lounge room watching movies. We got a room to ourselves which was really nice and had the most COMFY sleep with the heating cranked up 🙂

Next morning we were up and out early, on our drive we stopped to look at various stunning views etc., did a walk to see a seal colony and did another short walk around to see the Pancake Rocks which are rock formations that look like stacks of pancakes (funnily enough). That evening we were heading for the infamous ‘POO PUB’ which is a little hotel (more like blocks of sheds) which ONLY does bussiness with the Kiwi Ex, it is run by an 84yr old man can Les who is a straight talking, moody, rude, hilarious old man with a long grey beard. It is tradition that in the Pub part of the place they always have a party the night a bus arrives.. a fancy dress party and our theme was anything beginning with ‘P’ as it’s called the ‘Poo Pub’. So, our final stop before arriving was in Greymouth where they have cheap and chearful places to grab some dressing up stuff – holly and I just happened to spot some rather snazzy button-up Pink Panda Pyjamas which were just perfect so we got a pair each and that was us sorted. On arriving at Les’ place he told us where eveything was and then we had a huge dinner with steaks cooked by the man himself before we all got dressed-up and the drinking began… the pictures say it all as there were some pretty inventive outfits but that will have to wait till I’m back home! haha

After a wicked night we were on the move AGAIN to Franz Joseph. On our way we stopped at the Bushmans Centre which was a wacko little museum thing about the deer hunting and farming trade in NZ – there was a DVD and various different things to look at plus they had big Stags in a field and we fed thier possom.. there is a cafe there which serves famous ‘Possom Pies’ – famous due to the fact that it is illegal to kills possoms for thier meat and sell it so they make them using road-kill and ask for a ‘donation’ – yummy.

We arrived in Franz Joseph later in the day and had to go and pay for our Glacier hike which we were all doing the next morning before heading to our hostel which was really cool, jacuzzi – the works haha, yet we had bigger things to think about as we were getting picked up for a SKYDIVE in a few hours! WHOOOOO! Jumping out of a plane was absolutely amazing and Franz Joseph is the second most scenic place in the world to jump (behind Everst haha) so it really was spectacular, there was a 20min flight in the tiny plane before reaching the 12,000ft that we would jump from and as we flew we were surround by the two tallest mountains in NZ, Mt. Tasman and Mt. Cook 🙂 We were both much more excited than nervous and when the time came to actually jump out I was suprisingly calm and loved every second.

The skydive really took it our of us and we had an early night in preperation for our day on the Fox Glacier!..

XXXXXX

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