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Franz Josef
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In the morning we travelled further down the West Coast toward Hokitika, famous for its local cuisine and Pounamu/Greenstone. The traces of gold rush that brought thousands to the area in the mid 1800s are still evident in the historic town of Ross, where we stopped for a spot of gold panning and for a look around the old miners shacks and the old jail. Inside the jail were a series of news cutings from the time, desribing the crimes which led to a spell in the slammer, such as letting your goats eat you neigbours veggies, or more in keeping with today's society, drunk and disorderly behaviour.
Our final stop before Franz Joseph was at the fabulous Bushman's centre, a museum of sorts dedicated to the old school West Coasters who thought nothing of jumping out of a moving helicopter onto deer running over mountainous terrain, tackling them to the ground, hog tieing them, then stringing them to the bottom of the chopper before carting them off to a deer farm. Yes seriously! We saw the video! The place is run by a guy called Pete, a man with no time for political correctness - in the cafe, a long black coffee is a Michale Jordan, and a flat white is a Run-Over Englishman! Before the video came on Pete was quick to point out that it is not meant to glorify hunting, rather to demonstrate how one of New Zealands largest industries came to be, and to tell something of the men who helped to build it. This was contradicted somewhat by the opening scenes of the video, which showed a helicopter hurtling through river valleys to the tune of TopGun's Dangerzone!
Of our entire bus Felicity and Henry were the only two brave enough to try Pete's speciality - possum pie, which was actually really good. Henry also got to feed the huge pig, after Pete had warned him "when you have the bread, you have the power, but once you've given him the last piece, get the hell outta there cos he'll go for your legs!"
After the fun and games at the Bushman centre, we were back on the bus and arrived at Franz Joseph before lunch. That afternoon we were signed up for a hike on the glacier from which the town gets its name. This was an awesome experience. The guides were all really good, fitting us all out with water proofs, boots and crampons before we headed out on the bus to the base of the glacier. We then had a short walk through forest then across the very rocky valley before we reached the glacier face, then it was on with the crampons and up and away. We got about 45 minutes strolling about on the glacier surface, going though crevasses and checking out the amazing blue ice. The glacier is apparently one of the steepest and fastest moving in the world, and while we were up there we could here the ice collapsing at the face where the river flowed out. The views from the top of the glacier were amazing, but sadly, before we new it, it was time to head back down to the town again.
That evening we had some rather good lambs liver and mashed potato, then it was into bed for another early start...
Where I stayed:
Chateau Franz
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