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So I think i got to the end of my stay in Abel Tasman last time, sweet as!
It would have been good i think to stay at Abel Tasman for an extra day and do a walk to get a different perspective of the national park...but that gives me a good excuse to come back and do it again! The reason I moved on was because of the stray bus group that i had been travelling with, they were all cool people and everyone had a laugh and got on real well, so rather than stay by myself I moved on with them, next stop...Baz Vegas (aka Barrytown). On the way we stopped off at a few places for pictures, the Upper and Lower Bullar Gorge, Cape Foulwind - where we saw some more seals, we also stopped at Punakaiki to look at the weird pancake shaped rocks. Eventually we made it to Baz Vegas, not really famous for anything really, but the stray bus stops there so that the passengers can try out some bone carving or jade carving - neither of which i tried as i have a nice jade pendant already. The other reason why we stop there is for a fancy dress night, where everyone on the bus dresses up in some whacky clothes and get very drunk! Take a look at my pics, they are hilarious as i actually look good ha ha! (Joy Farwell and Phil Walker will be loving the pics...they know why!) But it was a great night as everyone seemed up for a laugh. In the morning we took a walk down to the beach to see if we could find some greenstone/jade (unfortunately the green stones i picked up were only greeen due to the algae on them :( better luck next time).
From Barrytown we made our way to Franz Joseph. On the way we stopped at Bushmans Centre. A small museum set up to teach people about the removal of wild dear when NZ was overrun by them, we watched a dvd on how they captured the dear and moved them to dear farms, which are now multi-million dollar businesses due to the demand for venison. The way they used to catch deer was hilarious, theyd fly out on a helicopter above a dear and one guy would jump out on to the dear...you should see the bloopers, he kept jumping out just as the dear moved! Good times.
The next day we were up early for our glacier hike! The Glacier looked absolutely stunning. We were about 30 mins walk away from the base and it didn't look that big, but as we walked closer you could see people in red jackets at the foot of the glacier and they looked like ants! The hike was brilliant, i enjoyed every minute of it, being able to hike for 8 hours on a glacier was such a great experience. The views were awesome, and thankfully the weather was perfect, it was sunny with clouds, there was some fog that we could see coming in but we luckily avoided it!
So from Franz Joseph i went to Makarora, and had a few photo stops, mainly at mirror lake where we could clearly see Mount Cook and Mount Tasman in the distance (as the weather was perfect again!), we did get a glimpse of fox glacier too, which looked just as beautiful as the Franz joseph glacier did. We passed through Haast, and the scenery as we drove through was amazing too. I say the scenery is amazing wherever i go, but thats because it is all amazing! Our driver took us to a halucenegenic waterfall called Thunder Creek Falls, something about it caused hallucenations...if you stared at the waterfall for 30 seconds then looked at the surrounding trees the trees looked as if they were moving up and down (no not cos of the wind) because of an optical illusion (something to do with watching the waterfall closely) apparently it doesn't happen with any other waterfall in NZ, so that was kinda cool! We arrived in Makarora late afternoon, and I chilled out while a few people went out on a jet boat. In the evening we all did kareoke at the pub on campsite, which was great fun...our stray group joined in for a few group songs...Bohemian Rhapsody, Oops I did it again, No Woman No cry. And on the way back after kareoke at about 2am, I stopped and looked up at the sky, no clouds anywhere and the stars were in their millions, it was beautiful...i even saw a shooting star!
Again I'm going to leave it there for a little while...gotta catch up in my diary for the last week or so...but its all good! Im in Christchurch at the moment, and have decided that i am going to cut short my trip in NZ (financial reasons) and leave within the next week, I was originally staying until 1st March so i could go and watch a music festival, but I wont be able to afford staying here for that long. I've really enjoyed my time here and am looking forward to a new adventure in a new country. Choice!
Until next time...chow for now
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