New Zealand - Week 2

Franz Josef

We were a little hungover from the fancy dress party last night when we left for Franz Josef, our first stop was The Bushmans Centre, where we watched a dvd on how they used to hunt the deer, by jumping out of helicopters onto the dear then roping all the deer together and transporting them to be sold. Then we had a look around the centre and saw a little possum, some sheep and deer. After this Luke tried a possum pie :( poor possum, he said it was nice though, you are not allowed to legally sell possum pie, so you have to make a donation to some possum thing to be able to eat them.... strange.

When we arrived at Franz Josef snow had settled and we booked ourself onto the Franz Josef glacier hike, where you are taken up to the glacier by helicopter and then hike the glacier for three hours before heading back in the helicopter. We were sooooooo excited an actual real glacier :)

Our hostel was the Rainforest retreat which was a lovely hostel with a nice old fashioned bar.

The next day we were due to do the Glacier hike.... however the cloud cover was too low and so the helicopters could not fly so we couldn't go. We were devastated.

So instead we went to the Glacier Hot Pools with Beth and Chris, the pools were 36, 38 and 40 degrees they were lush. We also decided to treat ourselves to a pizza buffet to cheer us up due to the cancelled trip, not that this made up for it, but we got loads of food, too much, 5 bowls of garlic bread and 5 bowls of chips, and we only managed 7 pizzas between 5 of us :o

Wanaka

Dissappointed we headed off to Wanaka because it was just our luck that the weather was beautiful this morning :( gutted :(

On the way we stopped at Lake Matheson the reflection Lake, and had an hour walk around there and got some fantastic pictures it was a lovely walk. However New Zealand is freezing at this time of year going into their winter, so we invested in some gloves.

Queenstown

When we left Wanaka for Queenstown we stopped off at Puzzling World which was amazing, it had some crazy illusions there definately worth the stop, plus we had a bacon sandwich too mmm tasty something we definately miss from home, the bacon is just not the same here :(

We also stopped at the Original Bungy to try and entice us into some of the extreme sports available in the extreme sports capital of Queenstown, but no we decided we didn't want to do any and wanted to book onto the Milford Sounds trip.

Tonight we went on a bar crawl, and our bus driver was meant to lead it however he did not turn up until 10pm and we had been out since 8pm none the less it was a great night we went round a few bars and had a few beverages and a cheeky dance.

Boohoo :( Milford Sounds road was closed and would not be ope until mid June :( this is just too much bad luck :( So we decided to go for a walk around the lake and we saw the flower gardens and frisbee golf. We decided to treat ourselves to one of the famous Ferg Burgers mmm they were absolutely great, and to think I didn't like burgers or cheese before I came, and I ordered a cheese Ferg Burger, and Luke ordered a sweet bambi burger, which he said was tasty, they were that huge I could only eat half and Luke finished the rest.

This is where we planned our Fiji trip yey sunshine here we come :) So Fiji came out more expensive than we had thought so we decided we would stay in New Zealand an extra week and try and do some of the activities we have been unable to do and go to Fiji for two weeks instead.

We decided we would rent a car and drive back up to Franz Josef to try and do the Glacier Hike again seeing asthough Milford wasn't due to open any time soon, we decided to stay 3 days to try and ensure the weather would be good at least one day, and Beth and Chris decided they would join us too.

So on our final day in Queenstown we decided to do the Hill walk, and a hill walk indeed it was, it took about three hours half up very steep hills but the views at the top were awesome, definately worth the aches the next day :) heading back to the hostel we stopped in at the Ferg cafe with Beth and Chris and got some Ferg pies and some deserts, they were so delicious.

Speak soon x