Mt Cook I wasn't feeling well leaving Queenstown, think I was getting a cold :-( Had a great 4 bed dorm room at the Base hostel with a view of the lake and the mountains, probably one of the better rooms - the only thing was a draft at night time entering through the glass door and windows of our small balcony. They didn't close tightly and therefore we had a constant draft in the room but it was not that bad during the day when the sun was out and none of us w...

Queenstown - The Stray bus left Wanaka at approx. 9:45 am and we arrived at 'Puzzling world' about 20 min later having about 1 ½ hour to spend at 'Puzzling world' or do a walk to the nearby Mount Iron. Since I had hiked for 5 hours the day before together with the Irish ladies I wasn't very keen on going on another hike this day and therefore placed myself at a table in the Puzzle world café. The 'Puzzle' café has tables filled with puzzles to test your br...

Wanaka - Getting from Franz Josef to Wanaka took about 8-9 hours. We departed Franz Josef at 09:00 am and arrived in Wanaka around 5:00-5:30pm. We had a short pick up in the nearby town called Fox Glazier before heading off to the beautiful mirror lake called 'Lake Matheson'. The lake has the nickname 'the mirror lake' because you can see the reflection of the mountains and trees in the lake - and this makes for a beautiful picture. At the beginning of the l...

Franz Josef - The Glacier town The Franz Josef Glacier is a 12km long glazier which was first explored in 1865 by a German geologist called Julius von Haast, who named it after the Austrian emperor Franz Josef the 1st. The glacier is five kilometres from town, and a 30 min walk from the carpark to the bottom of the glacier/lowest point. The Rainforest backpackers - Travelling with the Stray bus has certain advantages such as not having to worry about accom...

Westport - In my blog post about Kaikoura I mentioned that not all hostel owners should actually be allowed to run a hostel and this hostel was one of the bad ones. Not bad in the way of hostel facilities, the facilities were ok, a bit run down but ok. The owners on the contrary were rude, ignorant people. I arrived at Westport at around 11:40 am and had read at Booking.com that you were able to check into your room from 11:00 am at the YHA and therefore happ...