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The last four days has seen us descend from the cold heights of Franz Josef Glacier to the milder Abel Tasman National Park:
We left Queenstown early on Saturday morning after a horrendous night's sleep. The only other guy in our dorm, Reuben, had a chronic snore, which literally ripped through our sleep. It was so bad that Jo woke him up, with an 'excuse me' to ask him to move off his back...it really startled him, and he made a very strange and loud noise and jumped up! So when my alarm went off at 7, we still felt extremely weary and not in the best of moods. The mood was lifted by a beautiful drive between Queenstown and Wanaka, for those of us who weren't asleep. It was a long way up to Franz Josef Glacier, and we arrived at about 12:30 in the afternoon. In the afternoon we relaxed and prepared ourselves for Sunday. We visited the Glacier Hot Pools, three pools at 36, 38 and 40 degrees centigrade, which we had all to ourselves when we first arrived. The late afternoon and early evening was spent playing pool, watching films and cooking dinner.
On Sunday we went out with Franz Josef Glacier Guides for a spot of glacier-walking. Wrapped up in layers, a waterproof, waterproof trousers, boots and socks, and hat and gloves, we had a ten minute journey to the carpark and then a 45 minute walk over rocky terrain to the foot of the glacier. At the moment the glacier is receding, but it is famous because it moves a lot, as much as eight metres a day. It's a really impressive sight when you're at the bottom and you realise how hight it goes. Apparently it would take two weeks to walk right across! We were in a group of about 11, and after sticking on our cramp-ons, so we had some purchase on the ice, walked on to the glacier and spent six hours on it. We even had lunch up there! Having that amount of time meant we were able to get relatively high up, where huge ice mounds were formed. We got really hot in our layers, but our toes and fingers were numb. The best part of the experience was undoubtedly crawling on hands and knees into a small hole, which heightened but narrowed into a thin chasm that you forced yourself through. Joe got a little stuck! Elsewhere we ducked into holes for cool pictures, climbed steep slopes with the help of a knotted rope and admired the sparkling blue ice that rose steeply on either side of us. Unfortunately, someone in our group managed to sprain his ankle, so we were a bit late getting down, although he could hobble on it...
Yesterday was a fairly dull day, as it involved our longest drive of the trip from Franz Josef up to the Abel Tasman National Park and Motueka. We set off at 8, sharing out the driving and stopping at the town of Murchison for lunch. We eventually arrived at Motueka, which we used as a jumping-off point for Abel Tasman at 3. Motueka was pretty hideous, though this may have been because it was winter and there were roadworks in the middle of the main street. Everything seemed a bit grey and dirty. Understandably, we are all too happy to be only staying one night.
Today, however, was much better. Abel Tasman was a beautiful place, and although we didn't have the weather you would get in summer (it didn't rain but remained fairly grey the whole day), we avoided the hordes of visitors. We got the Abel Tasman Aqua Taxi into the national park, and started walking at 10:40. Everywhere you looked there was rock formations sticking out of the sea, green ferns covering the deceptively steep hillsides, and golden, deserted sands. We got our third sighting of NZ fur seals at Tonga Island, and walked up and down through native bush, crossing rivers, streams and waterfalls via various bridges, and heading down to beaches, inlets and bays. We saw loads of birdlife (herons, cormorants, kingfishers, terns and ducks) and stopped for lunch at the particularly beautiful Bark Bay. We got our water taxi back at 3:30, and then started the long drive over to Picton. We got here at 7:15, and got some fish and chips for dinner before relaxing and getting an early night.
We're planning to attempt the Queen Charlotte Track around the Marlborough Sounds from Picton at some point in the next few days, and then head down to Kaikoura to do a spot of whale-watching, before we cross over to the North Island and Wellington.
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