West coast whirlwind

With only a week left in New Zealand the picturesque west coast drive down the south island was a bit of a whirlwind. All our trusted guidebooks and untrusted friends claimed Queenstown would be the highlight of the trip for us, but having seen so many gorgeous beaches, mountains and everything inbetween, we started thinking what'd we'd already done would be impossible to top.



No matter what, we knew we had to make a pit stop at the glaciers, so we drove through the afternoon into the night to get halfway to Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers on the west coast.



The drive to Glacier country proved to be really interesting. There wasn't much in the way of big towns - as one of the cafe workers said to us at Franz Joseph, "I'm from about 20 kilometers away from here... And I never go back, not unless I have to help out on the farm.."

In between the sheep filled farms though there were several tiny towns leftover from the NZ gold rush. We only stopped in Greymouth, the largest of the old gold mining towns, long enough for ewan to refuel with a flat white (espresso with milk)... and for me to leave my purse in the cafe. Whoops.

Unfortunately I didn't realize I'd lost my purse until we stopped at Franz Joseph to do a day hike and I couldn't find my credit cards. Fortunately, as we'd only made one stop on the way, we knew right where my purse would be. After wasting the next few hours trying to find wifi, phone cards and post offices, we finally figured out how to have an empty package sent back to Greymouth and on to Christchurch At the campervuan rental... Fingers crossed it actually makes it there before our flight, with my i.d., cards and iPod in there! (oh yeah, and most importantly, three boxes of half eaten chewing gum. That's how we identified the purse...)

Finally we were off to trek on the glacier! Only, the trail to the glacier ended up being closed for the week due to flooding, so the we made the hike in record time (just waiting on the Tasha and ewan statue to be erected... Any time noemi sure) but didn't get to the glacier. I guess that's what Photoshops for eh? :)

Instead of waiting for the trail to clear we plowed on towards Queenstown. After one of the most amazing drives of The trip,we crept into Lake Wanaka late that night. We figured we would take off first thing in the morning, but once we saw what we were waking up to....




We quickly changed our minds and stayed. It was gorgeous weather, if a little chilly, so we did a hike in the morning and hung out at the lake all afternoon. It's hard to imagine Queenstown can beat this, but we'll find out tomorrow!




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Location:Fox Glacier, Lake Wanaka N-Zed