Today we awoke to sunshine and cloudless skies! It was a beautiful day as we packed up the car in Hokitika to head to the glacier region of New Zealand. First, we wanted to explore the Hokitika Gorge which was just southeast of Hokitika. This was one of Kevin and Mary Sue's favorite drives so far as it took us deep into a region where we saw snowcapped mountains in the distance and in the foreground all we saw were beautiful green pastures of dairy cows! Most of the cows were jerseys and there were no barns or huge milking parlors like we are used to. They rotationally graze their cattle and all seem to milk out of 2-3 sided small milking parlors instead of large barns.

The Hokitika Gorge was a beautiful walk of about 30 minutes or so that took us across a swing bridge and over a milky turquoise river and eventually to the gorge itself. It was pretty magnificent with the blue skies, lush greenery and turquoise water! We saw a man jump from the swing bridge (which was quite high!) into the gorge and eventually climb on the rocks near the end of the walk…we doubt that was supposed to happen, but he seemed to have enjoyed himself!

After our quick walk through the gorge we headed south, which brought us through more farmland and then closer to the coast again. It's amazing how in just a couple of hours we can see so many different terrains here, it's really quite stunning! We ate lunch in the car since Liam was taking a nap, and made good time to Franz Josef Glacier. We decided to hike the hour and a half trail to the glacier viewpoint. It was interesting to see the glacier, and what was even more beautiful was the ravine that the glacier left in its wake. It started as a rain forest and then turned into a rocky river bed surrounded by shear rock faces on one side and a lush forested mountain on the other. There were many waterfalls on both sides of the ravine. The sun stayed out so that we could see the blue of the glacier next to the blue sky, and the mountains had some cloud cover which made for a beautiful back drop. The only way to actually walk on the glacier is via helicopter, so there are a lot of helicopter tours running throughout the day. Liam loved finding and pointing out the helicopters to all of us throughout the hike!

After our hike we headed out for a quick dinner and another round of grocery shopping. We realized that we should have bought two coolers given the size of our group instead of grocery shopping pretty much every day! We really like our house tonight so it's a pity we have to leave tomorrow morning, but we are excited to drive one of the most scenic drives in all of New Zealand!