The Lower South Island

Well here we go again! So Mat brought you up to Franz Josef and I'll take you up to Lake Tekapo from where we'll travel back to Christchurch again so we can fly to Auckland tomorrow (14th) to make our flight to Hong Kong the day after (15th). We then have 3nights there before the overnight flight home (18th-19th).

Franz Josef is glacier country, NZ actually has loads of glaciers and is one of the few places in the world where they're easily accessible, 3 run down right into the rainforest. We stayed in Franz for 3nights, the first day we took a walk from the hostel out past mountains and through the rainforest itself to the Franz Josef glacier face. It was very surreal terrain, it made me imagine a childs picture where they just throw together everything pretty that comes to mind: river, snow-capped mountains, lush rainforest, blue sky, fluffy clouds, rainbow, ice! It's odd enough that it's cool in a rainforest environment without all of that on top. The glacier viewing spot was actually a fair distance away still for safety's sake, there have been incidents of people straying too close becoming buried under several tonnes of ice which has broken off above them. The glacier is formed from the compression of continuous snow fall on the mountain top causing ice formation, as new ice is formed it causes the older ice to start a very gradual slide down the mountain as pressure on weak points causes them to break off and shift. This process was evident when on our second day we took a trip down the road to nearby Fox Glacier where we'd booked onto a half-day glacier-climb. For this we had to get kitted up with warm clothes, walking boots and crampons and a guide then led us out onto the top of the glacier itself. Path cutters had been ahead to create nice safe ice steps and find any interesting features for us to view; the ice is ever-changing. We got brilliant views of the ice and saw some 'moulins' where ice-melt running down ends up pooling and mills out a hole in the ice shelf below it creating interesting shapes, one of which was a tunnel we got to climb through!

After Franz we had another 8hour coach journey to reach Queenstown, a lovely lakeside town nestled in the midst of the mountains where we'd splashed out on a 4star hotel! We awoke the next morning to pristine sunshine and went for a wander to explore the area. There were absolutely gorgeous views any way we turned and despite being cold the sun made it a pleasant day for just meandering around the shops and lakefront and scoping out places for dinner.

 

For day two we'd booked a day tour to Milford Sound in Fjordland. The coach departed at 7:40 and didn't return until 8pm despite the fact that we only spent around 2 hours at the sound itself which gives an idea of the travel involved! The journey there was beautiful though as it passed through the mountains (literally, through the middle in underground tunnels in places) and we had quite a few stops for photo opportunities. A sound is an area where there used to be a glacier but it's now retreated and the sea has moved in (I can't remember how exactly it differs from a fjord). It's basically an area of outstanding natural beauty where extremely steep sided, forested mountains rise straight from the water. We took a boat cruise seeing fur seals and even a penguin and the pictures will tell the rest. That evening we tried the world-renowned Fergburger. This place is open 22hours a day 7days a week and had a huge crowd spilling onto the pavement every single time we passed so had to be tried. The burgers were large and held up to their reputation especially after a long day!

Day three we just wandered around again, it wasn't as clear as our first day but the mountains had had a few inches of snowfall overnight so were a gorgeous christmassy backdrop to the lakefront artisans market as we wandered around, we also skimmed stones on the water, bought a few souvenirs, got lunch and visited a recommended chocolatiers for a mug of cocoa and home-made ice cream all before heading back to the hotel to utilise one of the complimentary private spa pools!

From Queenstown we had a 4 hour journey up to Lake Tekapo where we decided to stay mainly to break up the journey back to Christchurch. It's a small town near Mount Cook (NZs largest mountain) which you're meant to be able to see reflected in the lake. However as everything has been cloud covered the entire time we've been here I'm afraid we can't confirm that. A consolation though is that it started snowing as soon as we arrived and just kept going well into the night so we awoke to a very pretty postcard type scene. Hong Kong's going to be a shock to the system that's all I can say!

So there we go, that was New Zealand. We probably won't be able to post about Hong Kong until we're actually already home so I guess for now we'll just say thanks for reading and we'll see you all in the weeks to come!

Lots of love, Leah and Mat xx