Motel Franz Josef Hokitika

... br>
I walked into town next day – downhill wasn’t too bad - and then joined my walking tour of one. The guide had a very monotonous voice and didn’t seem to convey any enthusiasm and I can’t say I was looking forward to spending 2 hour with him but I suppose he did convey a few interesting facts. I have experienced plenty of walking tour guides and he was unique in his delivery style of boring – I can’t believe that his pre ...

... space on the afternoon tour, which turned out the better option as the weather was clearer and the seasickness warning had been downgraded to mild. The whale watch was excellent, I saw 4 sperm whales and got some really good photos of them diving and flicking their tails – they are not pretty but it is really something to see these huge creatures up quite close. At the beginning of the trip we also came across a pod of dolphins – there must have been ...

Wow, Where to begin.
Well firstly at the moment i am in Queenstown and its about 1 degree. I have only been here 8 days and i already have too much to tell, so i thought i would break this blog down into parts, where this blog part one is about my week back in Melbourne and my travels so far in New Zealand.
It's been so long since my last update, but thats because i hadn't done much since up until Melbourne. Works been going well, we got the Bathurst area completed in ...

... I've done 88 climbs (glacier was number 88), Kilamanjaro is one of my proudest moments, and I'll do Everest one day, if I can be bothered. We got kitted out in waterproof clothes and got on the bus to glacier. When we got there, there was glorious sunshine, which lasted about an hour before the rain hit again. But it definitely didn't ruin the sights or the day! We donned our crampons - the spikes on our boots. I exposed myself as a fraudulent ...

... the ice for us. I was impressed at how tough and strong she must have been to do that. The guides have to be on the glacier at 6am to carve out steps for the hikers before they get there every morning. This is necessary because the glacier moves and changes daily. At the foot the ice can move a meter a day, at the top, up to 10 meters a day. The whole experience of being on a glacier seemed almost bizarre to me. I've learned about them in school and ...

... lunch.

The glacier itself was in a valley between 2 mountains and stretched from the tip of the mountains to the river bed. Apparently 200 years ago, the whole area was covered in ice and the forest we walked through and that covered the mountain sides was only 150 years old. The glacier is increasing in size again which they have weirdly enough put down to global warming! It was an incredible sight to see and the scale of the glacier is hard to ...

... watching tourists. Here are the results of my anthropology experiment. There was a clocktower outside the pub. All the regular tourists took pictures from the sidewalk (~10), while all the asian tourists went out into the middle of traffic and took pictures (14). Some even setup tripods and spent aobut ...

... gold. The walk took us up to an excuse for a waterfall, but the overgrown, enchanted forest and spectacular gorge made up for it. After multiple short stops to catch our breath at the beauty we stopped in the lower gorge for our late lunch. Unfortunately we ended up being an early supper for a horde of sand flies looking for an easy meal. These little buggers seem to live on Deet, so were unmoved by the copious amounts of insect repellent we applied to ...

... We have good views of the glacier spilling down the mountain from further back. Back to Fox for a walk round Matheson Lake, just outside town followed by an excellent lunch at the Matheson Cafe sitting out on the sunny deck. The cloud is gradually lifting but still covers the peaks. We go heli-hiking, which means that a company takes my credit card and extracts a large sum from it. We then get into a helicopter and are flown ...

... the penguins will really manage to brave the 2metre high surf and climb the 10 metre rocks (pancake or not) in order to get to the cafe. Greymouth was quite a sight! We did not stop. Finally found the fabled single lane train bridge, which was a little worrying, hopefully we don't get squashed between an ...