Franz Josef

Yeah, I'm finally going to start writing about the trip. It's about time I stop being a slacker about the blog. I was writing everything down in a journal as we were travelling but I'm just now getting around to posting stuff. So here goes...

We started very earl on Saturday morning. Wake up was at 3:30 to finish packing and head to the bus stop. I've decided that I love New Zealand airports. This was the easiest flying experience I've ever had. Ever. We checked ourselves in in about two minutes. You do it all by yourself, luggage tags and all. So quick. No stupid lines. Then we got through security in under five minutes. I didn't have to take off my shoes or coat or remove any liquids from my backpack. We realized once we got behind security that there was no food back there but getting through security was so easy that we decided to just go back out, get food, and do it again. Then, when it was time to board the plane it was just kind of like "We're boarding now. You can get on the plane whenever you like. We leave in half an hour." We were slightly delayed due to fog in Christchurch and by the time they announced this, we were already boarded. But they said that we could get off the plane if we didn't want to stay on and they would reboard in a bit. But we could stay on if we wanted to. Awesome. That would never happen at home. I never want to fly in the States again.

After arriving in Christchurch, we picked up our rental car and some groceries. Subsistence living. Beans and rice, etc. We should really learn how to cook. It was a six-hour drive to Franz Josef. On the way, we stopped at Castle Hill and climbed around for a bit. It's a hill with a bunch of boulders strewn about. It looks a little like the ruins of a castle. Hence the name. It was quite fun to climb on. We, of course, took the short but extremely steep way to the top. There were great views of the foothills of the Southern Alps. The drive through the range was pretty wicked. Both Lorissa and I got carsick. Not fun. But the scenery was fantastic. We stopped for a lot of pictures. We basically cooked and crashed when we got to the hostel. We were exhausted from being up way earlier than anyone likes. The hostel had free vegetable soup; it was amazing and it warmed us up really well. Actually, a few of the hostels we stayed at had free soup. They were my favorites.

Sunday was our adventure climbing Franz Josef, which is a glacier. It was raining all day long. Despite raincoats and overpants, we were all completely soaked by the end of the day. We were all fearing for our ill-protected cameras, phones, etc. We didn't realize that it was going to rain quite that much. All of my stuff made it (except my return ticket for the bus from the airport when we get back Auckland) but Lorissa's phone broke and Kevin's passport got soaked. Sad day. Other than that it was absolutely fantastic. The views weren't as great as they would have been if it were sunny but the rain meant that there were some really amazing waterfalls on the surrounding cliffs. The ice was cool too (no pun intended). It is actually blue. It's a similar color to the light blue that they put on the inside of a lot of swimming pools. Not what I was expecting at all. Sadly, I have no pictures on the glacier because I was afraid to take my camera out in the rain. However, I stole some pictures that Scott took and I will post those.

More pictures and posts coming up. Keep an eye out.
Peace.