Franz Josef Hotels - Reviews and Rates

We had a restless night of sleep with constant heavy rain pounding on the roof of the campervan. When we got up the next morning the campsite was really boggy from all the rain (which still hadn’t stopped) and we were slightly apprehensive about how good the glacier trip would be if the rain continued. We drove into the town and found a ho...

Leaving Greymouth the highway follows the coast as the Southern Alps start to loom large to the east. Truly the land of the great white cloud with a snowline all the way along the range. Here things get a little wild with signs like "150km to the next fuel". I am entering the West and South. Eventually I get to the glacier region after the mount...

Off to Kaikoura to see the Whales that we missed last time. We saw 6 Sperm Whales while we were out there and to be honest it was not really worth the 2 year wait to see them!!! The best part of the day was while leaving the boast was seeing a little Penguin in the Harbour. On wards next day to Hanmer Springs which again is a very pretty town in...

Determined to make the most of our one full day in Franz Josef, we made a reasonably early start and had breakfast at a cafe on the main street. A charming Belgian girl took our order but unfortunately managed to duplicate almost everything, so Barb and Barb got 4 croissants each and Dave was in danger of being served so much bacon, eggs and par...

Well en route to Franz Joseph home of snow capped mountains and a bloody great glacier we stopped off at the most despicable place i have ever witnessed, a museum on hunting and killing animals, oh yes, and the cafe attached with the charming name of roadkill restaurant. Horrible evil place. Anyway thank fully we hit the road again and headed to...

Hello and welcome to our latest blog update! We have left Asia behind and we've been in New Zealand for 2 weeks now. We spent most of the first week in Christchurch which is a lovely place. The people are really friendly and it was warm and sunny (most of the time). We have now rented a campervan for three weeks (nicknamed 'Neil's on Wheels!') a...

Arrived in Franz Josef to go walkin on the glacier. Took a spin up to the fox glacier that night to kill some time but the weather was ****** so we didn't see that much of it. Luckily enough the weather the next day for us was great and we got a really good day on the walk. It was a long enough day as well and the guide brought us in through som...

Although a lot of great places are warm - 2 out of 2 travelers agree the best places on earth require layers. And sometimes even crampons. The day was not warm - but it was as warm as it was going to be with the sun shining and a few light wisps of clouds giving us a natural SPF here in the Southern Hemisphere. The sun definitely comes up, howev...

I left from Greymouth in direction of Franz Joseph where there is one glacier where you can do some hiking. On the way the bus stopped to Ross and old town where they are still doing some gold panning (for tourist) and real gold extraction for them. I did a hike during the time that the passages of the bus tried to find some fake gold in their p...

We were up and on the road fairly early since we had to drive about 200 km before reaching Franz Josef Glacier. We wanted to get there as early as possible so we had plenty of time to explore the glaciers. We had originally planned on stopping in Hokitika for lunch, but decided it wasn't quite the big surf town we were hoping it would be so we k...