Traveling spam

Hey all,

I'm in Te Anau now and we're heading out on the Milford Track tomorrow. Should be good times, especially when it rains (and it's almost guaranteed to rain.)

The last few days have been action packed, or at least there's been a lot of moving around. We took the other cool train, the Tranz Alpine, from Christchurch to Greymouth on Thursday. Beautiful day and a beautiful journey. The trip is about 4 hours and runs through the heart of the South Island through the Alps. I'm guessing they're called the Alps because they are similar to the European Alps, but I haven't been there yet, so that's just speculation. Regardless, here are a few pictures from the train and our brief stop in Greymouth. I apologize about the quality of the pictures, I couldn't seem to get things right when dealing with snow.

It was pretty much like this the whole way.

A couple of pics from Arthur's pass where it was actually snowing a little bit (700 m elevation).

Took a tour of the Monteith's Brewery in Greymouth. Great beer, good tour, and a most excellent post tour tasting. Free pours for the last 15 or 20 minutes. mmmm....free pours.

We picked up a car in Greymouth and Carolyn piloted our way down the west coast to the Franz Josef Glacier (say glacier like glay-see-er). We lucked into really great weather. The west coast is known for it's inhospitable climate, getting upwards of 7 meters (22ish feet) of rain each year. That's in contrast to the east coast, which sees about 0.5 meters. On Friday we took a guided hike onto the glacier. The glacier is supposedly advancing, which is surprising in this day and age of global warming. It's one of the more dynamic glaciers in the world due to the valley it comes through. Most glaciers are moving in accordance to snowfall from 15 or 20 years ago, Franz Josef is moving due to snowfall just 5 years ago. It has been retreating over most of the last three hundred years, but has been advancing for the last 20 years (or so they say).

A little view on the road down the west coast.

That's Franz Josef in the background, about 2.5 km away. At some point in the last 50-100 years ago, there would have been a shitload of ice and snow where I'm standing.

Lots of hazards.

The guide company cut stairs in the glacier making our lives much, much easier. Plus they supplied us with crampons, but they called them talons, which I think is a much cooler name.

With all this ice, I think I need a bottle of good vodka

The guy in the red is about to tell me to stop walking and taking pictures at the same time cause I'm liable to fall into one of the 30 foot crevasses. In my defense, I had pretty much already stopped because I realized the same thing around the same time.

We also stopped at Fox glacier for a few minutes but didn't get very close. It's only about 20 minutes away from Franz Josef. The biggest attraction of these glaciers is their proximity to lush rain forests. The terminal of Franz Josef is only 200 meters above sea level and surrounded by thick jungle. After the glaciers we were back on the road towards Wanaka, a town that is mostly a ski resort but has some very nice scenery and hikes during the summer time. It was my turn to drive and I very much enjoyed the twisties in our souped up Ford Fiesta.

Here's a nice view while still on the coast on the way to Wanaka. It's called Knights point. It looks friendly enough, but this was a very difficult place for people to get to by sea due to the inclement weather of the west coast.

Nice view up a river leading towards Wanaka.

Some where...over the rainbow...

Cload shadow animals near Wanaka.

These last three picture are from a day hike near Wanaka. It was very, very windy at the top, hence the poofed up hair.

Today we drove to Queenstown (on another fun twisty road), dropped off the car and took a bus to Te Anau in the Fiordland area. Tomorrow it's onto the Milford Track for my last few days with Carolyn. She's been a good traveling partner and it'll be sad to part ways.

Cheers.