Franz Josef Glacier

So these next couple days in Franz Josef were so relaxing and amazing. We left Wanaka at about 8 in the morning to head up the west coast. We had been told that it is almost always raining on the west coast and you rarely get a good day. However, just like our trip had been going, we had a beautiful day to drive up it! We even told some of the staff that it was a nice day when they did this and they were so surprised. I swear we were taking the good weather with us. It had started off kind of gross outside when we left Wanaka and drove through the mountains, but once we were clear of those it was wonderful. The drive was probably about 3 to 4 hours total to Franz Josef. 

On our way, we got stopped by a farmer moving his cows. Now, I never really realized back home that cows switch paddocks every so often to eat different grass or whatever they do, but after seeing all the huge paddocks here all belonging to one person, I figured out how it all kind of worked. I thought it was interesting that they moved because I have never actually seen a farmer move his cows before...until now. I was driving and I looked ahead and all of a sudden I see a bunch of cows trotting towards me. I slowed town and stopped and then saw the farmer. They came towards the car, and then the farmer turned them around to go the other way. It was crazy because he was like talking to them and doing things with his hands and they understood that it meant to turn around. It was so weird. Then the dogs jumped off the four wheeler and started running around and bringing them together. It was so cool seeing how well trained all the different animals were. Then they all started marching in the other direction and we just followed closely behind. Luckily we weren't in a rush because we were delayed by like ten minutes (I know that's not even that long). It was also interesting watching the cows because they would swoop into the gate of a paddock, realize it was closed, and then just keep going forward. Eventually they found the open one and just went in. Some people may find this really boring, but I've never really experienced anything like it, so I enjoyed it. Plus, if you've heard the song Wobble (speaking now to the younger people reading this if there are any), that song was playing in our car, so we were crying laughing because the way the cows were trotting had their hips bouncing to the beat. It was great.

After that there was really only another half hour or so before we got to Franz Josef / Glacier Country. Since the American guys wanted to go to the glacier as well, we booked a six person hostel with them at a place called The Chateau France. It was by far one of my favorite hostels. It really felt like a resort where we could all just hang around. It was really cozy and had free wifi which was a huge plus for us since we were always trying to find it. They also gave us free toast and cereal in the morning along with vegetable soup for dinner each night. It was a great hostel because it didn't even feel like one. At this place I really felt like I was on vacation.

At this place all six of us shared one hostel with it's own bathroom and mini fridge. It was like we had booked a Hilton Suite I swear. Plus since we knew everyone staying there we were a lot more at ease with our things (hence the huge mess...don't judge. Mom and Dad you'll be pleased to know that none of that is my mess!)

We checked into the hostel and since the weather was kind of blah (not terrible by all means, just not the greatest) we were just going to hang around the hostel and then go to the glacier the next day. We didn't want to risk it being gross weather on our way to see the glacier so we were all find with a day to just catch up with ourselves. Right away one of the workers pulled out a slack line and had us all practicing walking across it. He gave us an hour to practice and said if we could make it across from one side to the other on our own then we could have a free nights stay. I can barely walk well on land, so I knew I wasn't going to get the free night, but John got pretty close. I think the pressure got to him in the end. I wasn't too bad when I could hold on to Courtney's shoulder. I could maybe take like a step and then fall. I was afraid of falling and breaking my ankle since you fall kind of dramatically since you never know how bad you'll lose your balance. It's really hard to get up onto it without holding onto someone. You really have to have good balance. It was actually pretty addicting. We all just wanted to keep trying. Unfortunately, we all had to pay for our night's stay.

After the competition, the worker said that he knew someone who drove a Hummer Limo and that we could have it pick us up if we wanted. Of course we were all for that! We went to the store to get ingredients for dinner so we could be all ready to go by the time the limo was there. We made a pasta dish with vegetables and bread. It was really nice having a home-cooked meal for once. You can see me and Shaina hard at work while all the guys did the cooking!

After dinner the limo came and picked us up! It was really fun because we all felt super fancy. It turns out our limo driver's name was Bang Bang. We really didn't go far in it. It basically drove us around for a few minutes and then dropped us off at a place where we could play some free pool. Although it was a short ride, it was still pretty fun!

We just hung out after that and made our plans for the next day. It was supposed to be really nice again, so we knew it was a great day to go and see the glacier. There are two glaciers within an hour of each other. One is called the Fox Glacier and the other is the Franz Josef Glacier. Since we found a hostel in Franz Josef, this is the glacier we decided to go and see. We were told that both are pretty similar so it didn't really matter which one you went to. 

On Tuesday morning we got up and got our free breakfast. Then we headed to the glacier. It was about a twenty minute drive since we had to go over a ton of speed bumps. It really wasn't that far from our hostel. Then once we parked it was about a half hour walk up to the glacier. It was a really pretty walk with more waterfalls! I've seen so many on this trip but I'm still not sick of them. It was a really clear day out with blue skies so everything always seems so much prettier.

We eventually got to the closest point to the glacier possible. You can see it in the background (the white thing). Unfortunately we couldn't go any closer because they say it's not safe to venture closer. They have it roped off and have a bunch of signs with news articles about tourists dying because they ignored the sign and then got smashed by ice or something.  You can't really tell in the picture, but it looked more blue than white and it was really just a huge chunk of ice. It's pretty sad because the next time I come to New Zealand it may not be there anymore. In 2008 the glacier was all the way where we are standing in the picture. You can choose to take helicopter tours that take you onto the glacier, but these were too expensive. I would have loved to because I think being up on all the ice would have been such a fun experience. I did hear though that one of the factors to the fast shrinking of the glacier is due to the fact of people landing on it constantly which is too bad.

We walked back to our car and then looked up our next hike. Our next adventure was checking out some old gold mining tunnels near our hostel. There was one really common one that a lot of people go to. We were told that there may be some water inside of it so we may have to go in our sandals or barefoot. We headed to the track and began our walk. It took us about half hour again to get to the tunnel, but we eventually found it!

It actually terrified me to go in because I hate being in the dark and one of my biggest fears is to get trapped somewhere with no way out. Unfortunately there was water, so we all changed into our flip flops and stepped in the water. It was FREEZING but there was no way any of us were going to chicken out and not go. We headed into the tunnel and I was in the back because I'm slow and stumble a lot. We had one head light and some people had their phones, so we were able to see in the tunnel luckily. It was pretty chilly and almost eerie feeling inside of the tunnel. 

After walking through the tunnel we eventually made it to the other side! If you looked behind you while you were walking you could see the opening getting smaller and smaller. You could see the yellow of the sun getting smaller and smaller and then eventually it was just gone. It was cool. One bonus that we weren't expecting is that we got to see glow worms! Now, it was nothing like the caves where there were just hundreds all over the place, but we did get to see small clusters of them which was cool. It's always awesome seeing something you weren't expecting. Although the caves we went to before were the natural habitat of those glow worms, these glow worms seemed more "wild" and more surprising to see. The end of the tunnel didn't have anything too exciting. There was a wooden bridge that you could walk about 20 feet on and then there were signs saying to go back. The way back didn't take as long since we were a lot more comfortable with walking through the caves. Once we got out of the caves we let our feet thaw out a bit before putting our tennis shoes back on and walking back to our car.

It was Mitchell's birthday in a couple days and since we wouldn't be with them anymore, we bought them party hats and had our own little celebration. We had a BBQ with mashed potatoes and salad and had a wonderful meal. Then we went back to the room to play some cards.

Once it got nice and dark outside, Mitchell, Courtney, John and I all walked to go star gaze. We had to walk a little further than we did last time, but Franz Josef was such a small town we didn't run into any other people. Apparently the best place in New Zealand to star gaze is Mount Cook. We weren't able to make it there since it is pretty far of a drive, but in actual distance it's under 50 miles away I think. You can't just take a road straight there and you have to go around it which is why it takes so long to get there. Therefore we figured we'd see some great stars since we were pretty close to Mt. Cook. We brought a sleeping bag and headed down to some big rocks by the river and just lied down. It was probably one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen. You could see the whole Milky Way just stretched out across the sky and there were stars EVERYWHERE! It was so dark that some of the stars seemed to really be twinkling. It was so pretty and I don't even know how many shooting stars I saw. As we were walking there, we could see two black spots which were mountains in front of us with a patch of sky in between. I was in the middle of a sentence when all of a sudden the biggest shooting star basically went from one mountain to the other between the gap. I just stopped talking and started jumping up and down. It was so cool! It must have been going for like 3 seconds which is pretty good for a shooting star, and the trail it left was big and bright. It was so wonderful it almost seemed like it was fake and had been staged. After that it was mainly just little shooting stars, but they were still amazing. Eventually we were cold and figured we should head back. It was so peaceful I didn't want to leave. One of the reasons I love NZ is because you really have no animals or anything to really worry about at night. The stars were so amazing that I can only hope to see something as spectacular as that again somewhere.

On Wednesday it was time to say good bye to the guys and good bye to Franz Josef. This city was so amazing and we had such a great time! It really felt like a separate trip. Almost like a vacation within a vacation within a vacation. The scenery was beautiful and we got to really enjoy being outside. The only bad thing that happened here was that my laptop went absolutely bonkers and shut down. I thought it was a goner for good but it eventually turned back on again (although I'm still getting it checked out when I get home because it still has it's moody moments where it tells me a problem has been detected and then freaks out again). Other than that, these few days were wonderful and I'm really glad we took the time to stop here!