So we left the lovley little town of Nelson and headed down the west coast which is very uninhabited, full of sheep, rolling hills and very friendly people with beards even the women (only joking) because the west coast is so rugged it takes so long to drive as you have to manouvre round a lot of mountains, add that to the fact that these Magic busdrivers are a big bunch off girls and they can´t drive for more than a hour and a half without a donut and coffee break; which in turn leads to all of them being a bit on the podgy side; this all in all makes our day very long. So in between the excitment of Franz Josef glacier we had to stop off in the nothing town of Greymouth, which is a bit harsh I know but there was nothing really to do there; but at least the drive there was nice as we passed through the lovley Buller Gorge, and witnessed a JCB stuck in river which had been there for 15 years but was to difficult to get out so they left it there. Bit like the trollys in our canals!

Greymouth is a bit small and industrious but has a quiet claim to fame of making a decent beer call Monteiths and offered brewery tours, which unfortunatley declined to take as we were really looking forward to the expensive and very strenious task of climbing a glacier. Instead we relaxed in our very cool hostel Noah´s Ark that has themed rooms such as the monkey room and the elephant room are you catching our drift? We were in the Monkey room...I think I'm the only person to kick up a stink about the Penguin room!

Next morning we were back on our way discovering more of the lovely west coast with stops at a really nice beach with a walk through some slight rainforest to discover some cool blowholes a cave hole where water bounds through, and another at Pancake rocks which is a weird texture of rocks layerd like you guessed it... pancakes, it really is say what you see stuff. The it was on to Franz Josef.

See as we were only staying one night we were right off in the afternoon to get suited and booted for our climb up the glacier, we even got to wear those spikey shoes; which were a bit like wearing high heels ALTHOUGH I AM POINTING OUT NOW THAT I HAVE NEVER WORE THEM BEFORE in public!!. The glacier itself was pretty spectacular it was maseeev, but baffles you how its really warm yet there is a big block of ice here, then we got some English boffin to tell us the science (just like a panten advert) apparently there is only two places in the world like it, here and Argentina. The trek itself was amazing although slightly short, we got to climb through little ice tunnels and and see amazing sculptures, but softlad here didn´t take a jumper and was freezing his nuts off so i was slightly relieved to get down to the warm. Who doesn't take a jumper to a block of ice...Really the climb was out of this world, but we did come down far too fast, it was quite easy to walk on I was expecting it to be slippy for some reason but it wasn't, the trick was to walk normally otherwise you run the risk of falling and breaking an ankle! The Ice further up was much more pure and if you took the helicopter to the top it was like skiing snow. This was just a taster to make us want to go back for more!

A pretty cool experinace in the end definately something you dont do every day.

Off to Queenstown

Jones /normal

Miles/Italics