We're back after a brief spell out of reception along the West coast!

On Sunday, we made our way west from Picton. We didn't quite make it all the way across to the coast, so we stopped over in a place called Murchison on route. It was a really nice campsite, right next to the Buller River, but there was one huge problem with it... the sandflies!! For those of you who've not been to New Zealand, this is the one problem with this place! They are tiny innocent looking black flies, but they suck your blood and leave a really itchy bite where they land! We were literally surrounded by them in the campsite in Murchison and nearly went crazy trying to keep them away from us! We then learnt that they love to hang out in the west coast... bring on the next week!

On Monday, we reached the west coast and made our way down to Hokitika. We went via Punakaiki, to see the "Pancake Rocks". These are layers of rock that have formed on top of each other and have eroded away to form what looks like stacks of pancakes. The weather was amazing and we were starting to think that maybe the stories about the terrible weather on the west coast were made up to keep the tourists away (we soon learnt this wasn't the case... read on!) We arrived in our campsite in Hokitika in the afternoon - right next to the beach and lacking sandflies - hoorah! They have a competition on this beach every January to see who can make the most impressive sculpture on the sand. When you see the amount of driftwood and other debris on this beach, you can see why this competition might have come about! Although we were a week early for the competition, we thought we'd have a go (see pics!) That night, we headed to a gloworm dell just across the road from our campsite. We had to walk along in the pitch black, then all of a sudden we were surrounded by hundreds of little sparking lights! Amazing. Unfortunately, pics of this didn't work, but I did get one of Alex with his head torch on!

On Tuesday we headed further south to Glacier Country. We stopped along the way at various lakes etc, before reaching Franz Josef, home to one of the main Glaciers, the other being the Fox Glacier. That evening, we headed just out of town for our first glimpse of the glacier, but the weather was starting to worsen and therefore visibility was poor. In order to actually get close to the glaciers (and climb them!) you have to do a guided tour... so that's what we had planned for Wednesday!

On Wednesday, the weather was terrible!! It had rained all night and it was clear that it was going to rain all day too! This region is in fact rainforest and it has 6m of rainfall a year. To put this into perspective, in the UK we have 80cm a year...!!! Luckily the weather didn't impact our ice-trek and may well have made it better as the ice is more blue after rain, as it washes away a lot of the dirt on the ice. This was an amazing experience. You go up in groups of 10 or so, with a guide in front of you. The guide carves steps out of the ice as you go to ensure that you can get around (and you also wear spikes, or "crampons" on your boots). We had to climb through a number of very small crevices in the ice. As the ice is constantly moving, they have guides up on it all of the time - their job is to make sure groups can still access it safely. When you climb up the ice face, then step onto the glacier, it's like being in a different world. This was definitely one of the best things we have done so far (up there with swimming with dolphins!)

On Thursday we headed down the road to the Fox Glacier. This is a bigger glacier than Franz Josef, and slower moving. You have to trek higher to reach crevices etc in this glacier so we decided not to book with a guide and instead view it from a distance. We had to walk for a couple of hours to get to the lookout point, but it was worth it! It's probably worth saying at this point that the photos really don't do the glaciers justice, they're incredibly beautiful and it's so hard to capture it with a camera! They're also really hard to get the perspective of, but if you look hard enough, you should spot some people on the glaciers (especially the photos of Franz Josef), which should help give you an idea of how huge they are!

On Thursday afternoon, we went to Lake Matheson to try and get a photo of the lake with the mountains reflected in it, an iconic NZ scene. But half way round the lake, it started pouring with rain and when we got to the island from which you can take the photo, you couldn't see any mountains in the distance, just bleak greyness! We then continued down the coast to Haast, then onto Jackson Bay which sits at the very end of the road! This is a little fishing community, with one place to get some food, the Cray Pot. We had fish and chips (inside, away from the sandflies!), which was the freshest fish we've ever had! It tasted like sole, but when we asked, we were told it was "elephant fish" - good job we asked after we'd finished it! We then drove back to Haast, then started to make our way east, stopping at a DOC campsite called Pleasant Flat for the night. We had an amazing view of the snow-peaked mountains from the site. Unfortunately, the sandflies had followed us here from Jackson Bay though!

On Friday, we went for a short walk to the Blue Pools. These are glacier fed pools, hence their colour and temperature! We then continued down towards Wanaka, passing Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka on route. We decided to continue past Wanaka to see another glacier, the Rob Roy Glacier, as we had read that the walk to it was amazing. We had to drive down a dirt track and through several fords, and after about 20 kms of this, we were starting to regret our decision. But we had come this far so decided to persevere. We're glad we did! The walk took us about 3 hours and was pretty strenuous at stages, but the view of the glacier when we reached the top was incredible! Once again a surreal vision having just trekked through rainforest to get there. And again, unfortunately the photos don't do it justice! Absolutely knackered, we crawled back to Wanaka and stayed there for the night.

We've now made our way to Queenstown and plan to do what this town is geared up for... adventure activities! Alex is doing a bungee jump tomorrow morning (I just can't bring myself to do it too!), then we're rafting the Shotover River (grades 3-5!) tomorrow afternoon! Eeeek!