Glacial Preparations
Day 7 – Te Anau to Franz Josef
Consider how tired we’d been, we got a relatively early start towards Wanaka. Traveling to Wanaka required us to do the only backtracking of our whole trips on the South Island. We knew that we wanted to get to Franz-Josef to do some glacier hiking, but it was still undecided whether we might do a full-day or half-day. I entertained myself on the drive to Wanaka by looking at the New Zealand guides and writing on my computer. When we’d arrived in Wanaka and it was only noon though, it seemed we should continue on, for we were making good time. So, scratching the plan to do a day hike in Wanaka, we continued on up the West Coast, where the weather grew increasingly dismal and progressively rainier. After Wanaka the towns were small and inconsequential. We made a few stops along the river that the road follower, but never for anything more than bathroom and photo breaks. I continued to entertain myself on my computer until the battery ran out. Like much of the other forest in New Zealand, the trees on the West Coast were extremely reminiscent of rain forest. If I didn’t know I was in New Zealand, I might have suspected I was in South America at the base of the Andes. After about another four hours of driving, we arrived at the YHA in Franz-Josef. The city of Franz-Josef was an odd sort of city. As we’d traveled west and north, the cities had grown increasingly less touristy, but Franz-Josef was the exception. The whole town seemed to revolve around glacier tours. There were a few other activities, which one could do for entertainment, but the glacier tours were the big one. After checking in to the YHA we got ourselves signed up for a full day glacier tour the following day. It was already late in the day and I was tired so rather than walk around the town with tour, I just wrote some on the laptop and putzed around. The evening passed quickly. We made our own dinner for the first time since early in the trip. We had some bread and Spaghetti. I got on the Internet for a while and then went into the TV room where I watched an hour of Simpsons. After leaving for a while, I came back as the other people were just starting a movie. Although Tory and I had both seen the movie before, we sat down to watch Joe Somebody. By the time it was over it was already growing late (at least with respect to when we had to wake up), so we decided to hit the sack. We had to get up at 8:30 for the glacier hike, so after a little reading I feel asleep.
Tags: Franz-Josef, Glacier, New Zealand, Travel, West Coast
gregbilsland
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