South Island from Franz Josef to the bottom of NZ

Wednesday 13 to Thursday 21 Feb

This last week has been a mixture of good and bad.

Once we left the beauty of the deserted long beach at Lake Mahinapua, we headed up into the *rainforest* of the West Coast. There is something of a hint there, as we then got torrential, rainforest, monsoon, total downpour (you get the picture) rain for 2.5 days, all the time we were in Franz Josef. I had wanted to do the heli-hike, where the helicopter takes pax way above the top of the glacier, to the pristine blue ice, ice bridges, ice caves, crevasses etc, but 1. the cloud base was too low and so no flights were going up, and 2. (which to me was distressing) I could not fit into the hiking boots with crampons attached to be able to walk on the ice. Once again, my d...ned feet were stopping me doing things. I tried to make up for it the next day by walking as far as I could towards the tongue of the glacier, in a break in the rain for about 1/2 hour, but then the monsoon returned and I squelched back to the hostel ... and cried. The rain was unremitting and non-stop, the tops of the mountains were covered in low cloud, and so Anita, Gill and I (some now-good friends from Edinburgh) sat in cafes and drank tea and ate chips. Such is our experience of the beauty of Franz Josef.

Thursday 14th: Valentines Day. Good for me this year for the first time in my life. Usually I am the one not getting any greeting, but it was different this year :).

Yep still raining. Gill and Anita and I wasted the day. I wrote up my diary and rested, and we all treated ourselves to dinner at the end of the day - bangers and mash for me, and vino.

Friday 15th: still raining!!! Huge blobs and globules of rain, trickling down my neck when I took my case out to the bus, mists and curtains across the valleys and on the mountain tops, huge puddles to ?play? in, and yet it also made the NZ vegetation very "Jurassic Park" if you get my illusion.

HOWEVER, as we drove south, we got clear of the rain/monsoon. We stopped at Lake Matheson and the lake was so still that we got perfect mirror images of Mts Cook and Aoraki in the lake. My pics came out monochrome and very effective - they could be turned upside down and the image would be the same. We also had a good squint at Fox Glacier, which is more accessible than Franz Josef and so I kinda had my fix of glacier scenery.

Hooray the weather cleared to blue skies and puffy clouds. We cruised along the West Coast Highway and the beaches and cliffs were amazing. Lots of waterfalls coming down from the cliff sides, wide river mouths carrying white silt and rock flour into the estuaries, the water emerald green or sapphire blue, especially in the river estuaries. We stopped at Ship Creek, and it was sand-fly city - their bite is very subtle, but very quick and suddenly you are covered with red, maddeningly itchy bites, which take weeks to heal and leave yucky raised scars. Yes, ankles and legs got well and truly attacked and I am still scratching now. The beach here was wonderful, backed by the Southern Alps and soft, large grain sand, the waves were huge and I got some good pics of the surfing rollers falling over themselves and curling inside.

From the coastal area, we moved up into the alpine scenery up the Haast Pass. Deep blue sky, soaring mountain tops, white-capped with recent snow, deep green of the treees and vegetation, , blue-white sparkly rivers, deep rivers from both tectonic movement and glaciation, hanging valleys and waterfalls (more geomorphology lessons for you!). Reached Wanaka and had a good accommodation at the Wanaka Hotel - NOT a backpackers for once, and so had the best night's sleep for ages.

Saturday 16th: first stop today was at Puzzling World. Yeah, kids stuff, said the whole bus, but it took Cuddles (Dave the driver) a winch to get all these adults out of this great place!! There was an illusion room, where it was at an angle of 15degs and so the balance system in the ears goes wonky - I kept toppling over sideways, and then the eyes see the mirrors and the balance goes even more haywire. A sliding-chair seemed to go uphill, as did water, and when trying to stand on an angled-step, my body constantly wanted to fall backwards and not forwards. Really difficult to explain, but the photos do it justice. The "public toilets" were a mural of Roman toilets, and Gill amused herself by apparently sitting on the loo, er, with no trousers on - funny. In the Shrinking Room, we all played at Alice Through the Looking Glass - it was curioser and curioser as we all seemed to be tiny in one corner and giant in another - great fun. Then the whole bus played at the kids puzzles and mind-benders in the cafe, and, as I said, Dave had to drag us all out of there reluctantly! A good, cheap way of having a lot of fun in a small area, without chucking oneself off a bungee or doing shotover river rides in Queenstown.

Sunday 17th: late start today due to a well-needed TLC call from home (thanks for that). The rest of the day I amused myself on the luge (see the Rotorua entry for similar crazy adventures), and then walked up round the Skyline Loop walk, and found some great pics of fungi - fly agaric in all stages of growth and size, and brown capped ones, and yellow-undersided ones. I didn't touch any of them, but the macro-images of the gills of the fly agaric - well I am very proud of those images, as they came out so well.

Monday 18th: Late start again, but that was cos I deliberately overslept. Went to Arrowtown - the gold-rush town, and had an archaeological/historial lesson going round the Chinese settlement, of when they were gold-miners in the area. In the afternoon, I (yet again) exhausted myself by walking up Tobins Track, but the reward of the views at the top were amazing. Couldn't put one foot in front of the other when I got back to the bus, but at least I got up and down OK. Said goodbye to Dave the Driver today - he had been so helpful with carrying my bag in and out of inaccessible accommodations, and for moral support when I was so down last week, and I hope that he had a good trip back up the islands to Auckland. Also received a picture of my little nephew - he is adorable and giggling and cute - and I can't wait to see him in April.

Tuesday: up early today to meet the Bottom Bus. This is a partnership with Kiwi Experience to go right to the bottom of NZ, and into Milford Sound, and I got it as part of my Kiwi Ex ticket. The trip to Dunedin was ok-ish, nothing special. Nice city, full of fresher students, and Hot Sun - amazing

Wednesday 20th: We had a good day today cruising around the coast of Southland and the Catlins. On a deserted beach at Kaka Point, I found lots of shells, saw many seals playing in and out of rock pools, and in the afternoon, at Surat Bay saw sea-lions!! Huge, 6-8 ft tall, whiskered,, lolloping around the beach and flicking sand over themselves, but then when another male came along, one of them reared up and they spat at each other and fought. We got pretty close to them all and loads of good pics. What a privilege to get so close to them in such beautiful scenery. We visited a Petrified Forest, but unfortunately didn't see any yellow-eyed penguins. However I had had my penguin-fix in Abel Tasman, when one was just drifting along in the tide, about 2 ft from the side of my kayak. Wonderful.

Invercargill is right at the bottom of NZ (only Bluff is more south) and it seemed like a place where nothing really happens. I was too exhausted to go out and explore and I was in bed by 9.00. All the stress and distress of this week (not being explained in this blog) has caught up with me, and I was totally shattered. At least the accommodation was decent, with nice beds and so I got a nice nice sleep.

Thursday 21st: visited a paua carving place today and could carve our own pendants. Some of the group had a go at shearing a sheep but I, and many others on the bus, opted to just sit in the sun and drink tea/coffee. Spending the night here at Te Anau - the YHA is great, very comfortable and highly recommended by Lonely Planet - a good choice for me.

That's it for now. Up to Milford Sound tomorrow and then back to Queenstown. Then I start my northward bound journey back to Auckland for my last week in New Zealand. See you soon