More Glacier activities this morning…..checked out of the Alpine Lodge, not a minute too soon for Annelise as it was a bit to Backpacker for her liking. Drove 20 minutes to Franz Joseph glacier "town". Checked in for our tour (second part of Annabel and Martin's present to A) and were kitted out with boots, smelly socks and jackets. Ambled over to the helicopter pad so Rusty could take us up the glacier. Flew 10 minutes hugging the steep sided lush va...

Day 13 :Annelise of the Antarctic Set alarms early, although were awake early having had a sound night's sleep. Carla and Michael served up a feast of fruit, smoked salmon bagel, granola and freshly baked muffins. Our hosts waved us off at 830 as we set off for Fox Glacier. The first stage of the journey took us past the far reaches of Lakes Wanaka and Hwaea. The scenery was just incredible. After the lakes the road followed wide rivers flood plains and m...

Predictably, on the day we had planned to do a long walk it was raining. Joined our fellow guests for breakfast: a delightful, youngJapanese couple who spoke good English and got the camera out to document every course.The eggs Benedict was yummy, and Annelise was pleased with herself as, gulp, she tried the granola and liked it! Small issue to start the day was returning the bikes in the rain. Needless to say, I volunteered to cycle them back - 2 journeys - ...

Day 11 All the Pinot and chocolate the day before, combined with a lot of action movies on a long flight, made me have some scary dreams about sharing a house with a terrorist. Enough! We rose at the crack of 0800 and had a fine breakfast whilst chatting to our hosts. There is obviously a bit of rivalry between Queenstown and Wanaka as they asked why we were bothering to spend so much time there. As Rae fussed over us it soon became clear that Winston's sole c...

Another crack of dawn……By now we had named the Centra at Aukland "Fawlty Crossroads Motel". The catalogue failures was endless but highlights included TV remote control not working, coffee machine out of order at breakfast andhaving my glass of Pinot Noir served into my lap. The domestic departure lounge at Auckland was devoid of any facilities save a ropey cappuccino. Finally we were off and no more airports for 3 weeks. Arrived in a cloudy and ...