Hello All, Here is another installment of our blog. We are a little behind, but are still trying to give a good account of everything. 06/06/08 We had a quick look around the town in the hope of finding some cheap ski-clothes, but as per usual, we had no luck. We had a long day of driving today along windy roads all the way to the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers on the West coast. We stopped off after about half an hour at a lake which was very clear and gave us a great photo opportunity as the snow capped mountains behind were reflected off the surface. To get to the lake we had to jump over some quite large streams (Heather walked through) and walk over lots of pebbles, but it was worth it as we had some great views. Our journey to the glaciers was not helped by torrential rain for the most part and this was hardly surprising as the West coast receives all of the rain in its prevailing winds. This did help us to understand why the coast was consuderably greener than the rest of the country and why it resembled a rainforest. We arrived at the Fox Glacier around 3pm and decided to walk up to a number of viewpoints to get a good look. The glacier was an amazing structure filling the majority of the valley with a river roaring out from beneath, but our time was cut short as it started to rain again. We eventually arrived at the Franz Josef Glacier township and we promptly checked into the YHA, which again was a very clean and modern hostel with a large dining and communal area with a warm fire. We booked onto a 6 hour glacier hike for the following day that would take us to the blue ice caves found half way up the glacier in the hope that the clear blue skies would return. 07/06/08 When you wake up at 7.30am in a New Zealand hostel in the township of Franz Josef, you do not want to look outside and see that the beautiful blue sky that you have seen for most of your time away has been swallowed by a sprawling mass of grey that thunders down rain every passing second. Unfortunately for us, this is what we found. With the trip in doubt we set off to the office to sign in and get kitted up. When we arrived we were surprised to find hundreds of people getting ready all talking excitidely about the prospect of climbing the glacier. After we had all kitted up, we marched to the bus and sat on the freezing seats. To our despair one of the guides quickly came onto the bus and informed us that the hike was cancelled as the rain had caused the river to be too strong to cross for us to get to the glacier! We rather moodily took our gear off and trudged back through the rain to our hostel. With too much time to play with, we decided to read through the guidebooks and plan the rest of our New Zealand trip. This proved to be quite successful as we found lots of things to do as well as making good progress around the South Island. The rain ceased up around 3pm so we took our chances and headed back down towards Fox Glacier. On the way we stopped off to view the Franz Josef glacier and we finally fortunate enough to get some great views of the snow and ice as the sun had come out and the majority of cloud and mist ahd disappeared. Our main goal of the day was now to get to the black sand Gillespie beach. When we arrived we had to put a few more layers as there was an outrageous gale coming from across the sea and all of the foam was beeing kicked up into our faces. We had fun throwing stones into the sea and running away from the waves before we had had enough of the cold and returned to the haven of our car. We stopped for some more views of Fox glacier on the way back before we spent the evening watching the end of Lord of the Rings. 08/06/08

When you wake up at 8am in a New Zealand hostel in the township of Franz Josef the day after your glacier hike was cancelled, you do not want to open the curtains and find that the sprawling mass of grey that occupied the sky for the whole day before has been replaced by crystal clear skies and white snow on the mountains. Unfortunately, such is life and we left the hostel annoyed that we had chosen the wrong day to hike!
We again drove for most of the day winding our way through temperate rainforest and the southern alps before we ended up in the jade carving town of Hokitika. We decided to take a walk along the beach, which again was very windy, and had fun skimming stones and looking for raw jade before we drove to the end of the peninsula and attempted to watch the sun set over the water. We hoped to see the snow capped mountains turn orange in the sun, but unfortunately, the cloud came and blocked any form of sunset.
After darkness had fallen we walked through a glow worm dell that was a few minutes up the road. When we arrived it was still twilight and there were no glow worms to be found, however, by the time we left there were hundreds of tiny glowing lights all underneath the mosses and ferns. It was a pretty cool sight, however, it was not bright enough to warrant a decent photograph.
As we felt there was not much else to do in the area we carried on up the highway to Greymouth where we spent the evening shopping for ski gear in a large warehouse called 'warehouse'.

09/06/08

The hostel that we stayed in last night was quite nice although rather creepy. We stayed in the room known as the chapel so we assumed that the YHA was a converted church. It was a nice room although it was very large and as there was nobody else staying in the room, it was very cold! We started our day by driving 30km up the coast to a small village called Barrytown. Here, we spent about 4 hours carving a maori necklace out of bone. This was great fun although the smell of the bone being shaven and sanded down was pretty disgusting. We each chose a design that we liked and then drew out a template, which was then roughly cut out by the supervisors. Our job was then to go through a series of sanding processes and varnishing to get the shape and look we desire. Heather and I both chose fish-hook designs as not only did the look the best, but they most resembled a maori design.
With the rain starting to fall we returned to the car and carried on up the coast. Our next stop was Punakaki Rocks which are also known as pancake rocks and are situated just south of Westport. The rain ceased and we were fortunate enough to see the waves crash into the rocks and force water up through the blowholes. The rocks themselves were just as interesting as they consisted of hundreds of layers that were almost identical in shape and thickness stacked on top of each other, giving them the name pancake rocks.
Our final stop of the day was Cape Foulwind just outside of Westport. Here, we went for a walk along the cliffs and found a seal colony. We actually heard them before we saw them as they were really loud, however, it was quite exciting to see a colony in the wild and in the freezing cold although they seemed to want to be in the water more than on the rocks!
On the way back into Westport we decided to stay at Bazils youth hostel as we had read some good reviews. To our surprise we were the only guests for the night so we had the whole hostel and all the facilities to ourselves. The kitchen was huge, the lounge warm from the heat of the fire, and a lazy cat who just slept all evening.