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Hey, currently travelling on the west coast of the South Island where its quite remote so the postcard updates have been a bit limited. After Leaving Nelson on thursday we headed for westport. Stopped off to take in the Abel Tasman national park on the way but unfortunately the budget didnt stretch to a guided tour on the water taxi-boo so instead we spent the morning playing mini golf. In Westport I was due to stay 2 nights with Vicki but it was a real ghost town and I managed to change my bus to get out the following day and catch up with Vicki when we get down to Queenstown.
After a relaxing night of videos etc we started our journey to Lake Manihapua. Our first stop was to see a seal colony and then we did some good walks to the pancake rocks and blowholes-all my geography lessons came in handy when I was explaining to everyone how they were formed by erosion!! What a geek!
In Lake Manihapua we arranged a big group meal and party that they lay on for the kiwi bus every night. Our theme for fancy dress was Men in drag, girls in bags, so we got loads of stuff for our costumes. Had the best steak dinner cooked by Les the owner of the hostel (who's over 80 and an absolute legend-apparently he was an all black in his day).
After dinner we made our outfits-I teamed up with 4 of the girls to make super hero costumes, with masks and all. There's not much you can do with bin liners but it was so fun. Had a late one of drinking games and lots of laughing at the boys in bras.
On Saturday morning we took the bus to Franz Josef further south. Our first stop was at Pete's Possom place which is a kind of quirky museum/restaurant. The guy who runs it was a hoot and had us all cracking up. He's made his living jumping out of helicopters onto the backs of unsuspecting deers in the wild and capturing them to sell the meat. The guy obviously cant stand animal lovers and vegetarians because the signs were hilarious. One of them read:
"This short film contains a small amount of shooting which may offend some young children or adults from Planet Bambi"
There was so many funny signs, even the sandwiches were labelled- "Unborn chicken and Pig".
We did some wicked walks to see the glacier in the afternoon and to Pete's pool which reflected the view like a mirror. Stunning. The hostel was great and we met up with some people we lost way back in North Island which was cool.
on the second day in franz I did a glacier explorer hike. This was a 6 hour walk going up the glacier, through some crevasses and generally climbing around looking at all the features. Its something I've always wanted to do and I absolutely loved it. The most suprising thing was that we all wore shorts and it never got that cold-weird. The ice was a clear blue colour and just amazing to see it in the middle of rainforrest. The trip did zap my energy in the evening a bit but I'm so glad I did it.
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