Days 11 to 14 - Franz, Fox, Rob Roy, and Queenstown

Hello, my name is Ted, and I have been video game free for 24 days:(  Thank goodness I haven't had to give up my Coke habit.  (And by Coke I mean Coca-Cola.)

So I'm definitely falling quite a ways behind here on the blog.  So the plan is to have two big posts in the next couple of days to get us through the rest of our time in NZ as we are currently on Day 2 here in the Land Down Under.

So here we go...

Day 11

The plan for the day was to visit both the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers.  We were toying with the idea of paying for a guided tour on the glacier, but when we woke up to another day of crappy weather, we decided we'd skip the tour, and just walk the paths that take you as near as safely possible to the front of each glacier.

"I'm Hans, and this is Franz, and we're hear to pump, CLAP, you up!"

So as you can see from the above picture, the weather at Franz Joseph was not pretty.  We both got soaked on the hour plus walk to and from the face of the glacier.  The one good thing about rain in New Zealand though are the waterfalls.  Rain means more waterfalls and bigger waterfalls.

As you can tell from the people in front, this ain't no little waterfall.

Glacier runoff in the foreground with the glacier face behind it.

We actually got a lot closer than where I took this picture of the glacier, but with all the fog this was the best picture I got.  Without the fog there, you would be able to get a view of the glacier way back and up into the mountains.

Once back in the car and completely soaked, we started on our way to Fox glacier which was only a half hour down the road.  Instead of going up to the face of Fox, we instead decided to drive up a road which takes you to a few good views of the glacier so we didn't have to brave the rain again.  Just as we pulled into the parking at the first view point the skies parted and the sun came shining down.  No joke.

Fox Glacier and blue skies above.

Look at those blue skies.  We couldn't believe we got so lucky.  After this we decided to hike a path (1.5 hours return) that takes you to a closer view of the glacier.  Since it rained so much over the past few days, there was one point where you had to make your way across a pretty deep and fast moving river.

Sharon building up some nerve before the big jump.

Sharon did me proud and made the leap only after a minute or two of hesitation.  It was the older woman who crossed it just before her that gave her the push to do it.  "If she can do it, so can I!" she screamed out as she leaped across.

Captain America and Sharon in front of Fox Glacier

Here we are in front of Fox after crossing the river.  The nervous glint in Sharon's eyes is due to her thinking about the trip back and how we had to cross back over the river.  No worries though as we both made it back over safely and back to the car park where to continued on our way to Wanaka where we would stay that night.

The way to Wanaka.  Sucks to be us.

Day 12

We woke up to a gorgeous Saturday morning in Wanaka which was good news since we were planning to do another big day hike of the nearby Rob Roy Glacier trail.

Saturday morning.  The view from out front our hostel.

The hike was fantastic, although we made it much longer than it was supposed to be.  We somehow missed the turn off for the hike we wanted to do, and ended up going four hours down another path and back before finally finding our way back onto the right trail.  All in all we hiked for over 7 hours, but had a great time.  Thanks again to Jon and Mere for the great recommendation.  Here are some pics from the hike:

This pretty much sums up the last 20 minutes of driving to get to the start of the hike.

There are worse wrong turns you can make...

Sharon amongst the cows.  Game of the day:  Avoid the cow pies.

Seriously!?!  How the #$%& did we miss this?

Beware falling giant fish head rocks!

Rob Roy Glacier.  The picture doesn't give the view we saw justice.  Well worth the 7 hour hike to get there.

Day 13 & 14

On Sunday we woke up pretty sore, and made the quick one hour drive to Queenstown where we would stay for the next two days before heading out on our big 4 day hike of the Milford Track.  We pretty much rested and relaxed all day Sunday.  On Monday we took a gondola up to a peak that sits right above the town.

The view you get at the top of the town is quite awesome.  Not only do you get a great view, you also get to watch paragliders and bungee jumpers.

I either have a feather in my hair or that is a paraglider behind my head.

We didn't just go up for the view however, we went up to ride down the Luge, a pretty long concrete track you can race down in little motorless go karts.

Riding the chairlift to the top of the luge.

As usual (as you can see by the above picture) they didn't have a helmet that was big enough to fit my giant head so we had to squeeze this one on.  Good thing I didn't crash as the whole back of head is completely unprotected.

Sharon unwittingly approaching the banana peel I dropped on the track...

We both went down twice with no incidents and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

That's it for now.  Stay tuned for our Milford trek post coming shortly...