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After a great sleep in our luxury hostel (being serious, it was lovely), it was time to board the 'Magic' bus. We met our driver for the next few days, 'Dusty'. He was hilarious and really good fun and constantly says 'Sweet as'!
We stoped at 'Hokitika' for some breakfast and had a little look in a jewellery store with lots of NZ jewellery and stones. I bought some nice earrings, a bracelet and necklace made from Paua Shell, really pretty!
The next stop was at a place called 'Ross'. It is New Zealand's richest town and it is well known for gold mining. Supposedly, there is millions of dollars worth of gold under the town but the residents don't want to move so nobody can get their hands on it. We jumped out and did some gold panning. It was great fun, I managed to get quite a bit of gold and also found 2 big pieces of Jade - was so chuffed. We got to keep what we found so I've got it to bring home and show you all!
Daisy and I nipped to the toilet before the bus left and guess what............ as we walked out of the toilet the bus drove off!!! We started running and shouting on Dusty but he kept driving. Lots of old ladies came out of the shop and were telling us to run faster, hee hee! Thankfully two girls on the bus noticed we were missing and told Dusty to stop. It was then that he looked in his mirrors and saw us running down the road, hee hee. We are now the laughing stock of the bus and there are constantly jokes made! Before he leaves any place he always asks myself and Daisy to give him a wave!!!! Was so scared at the time but hilarious to look back on.
We arrived in Franz Josef at lunchtime and we had to quickly check into our hostel, grab some food and then head to the Glacier centre. Daisy and I had booked in to do the half day glacier hike - we were so excited.
We booked in, got all our waterproofs and boots and hats on and jumped on the glacier bus. We were taken up to a woody area where we had to walk along little windy tracks to get to a valley. We stepped into the valley and you could see the glacier at the end of the valley. It was beautiful! I couldn't actually believe that we were going to be hiking up it!!!! It took us 45 minutes to reach the bottom of the glacier. We then put our 'crampons' on, (spikes on our boots, god knows why they have been given that name!), and started to hike up the glacier.
We walked up ice steps and held on to rope for tricky parts of the glacier. It was unbelievable, the glacier was gorgeous! Some of it was pure white and some was so blue, it was fascinating to see. The guide took us into a few caves aswell which was really cool. We had to crawl through one of them, fantastic! I have taken a lot of photos but a camera just doesn't capture what it was really like.
I was surprised that we weren't actually too cold. It was raining on and off so we were a little wet but it was hard work hiking around so we were kept warm!
After the hike, we headed back to the hostel for a shower and then went to the famous 'Blue Ice Bar' for tea and drinks. The weather had been getting worse as the day had gone on and it was absolutely bucketing with rain. Then the thunder and lightening started and at one point the bar was hit by lightening and everything went off! Very scary, you could imagine what I was like! It then happened another twice so it was time for me to move on from the wine and get on the cocktails! The bar man made me an amazing cocktail and he named it 'Sex in a thunderstorm' as I had told him that I liked the cocktail 'sex on the beach'! Hee hee. Dusty joined us for a drink and so did Helen and Caroline (they are on a different tour bus from us). It was a really good night!
We headed home about 1am and knew we wouldn't get much sleep as we had to be up at 6am - oh well, you only live once eh! Well.............we hardly got any sleep because of a weird room mate we had. She was an old lady in her early seventies!!!! Yes I did say early seventies - can you believe she is living the hostel life?!?!? Anyway, she was asleep when we got in so we crept into bed and fell asleep.
I was then woken up by a loud beep, just one beep so it wasn't an alarm. I looked up and saw the old lady getting up. I thought she was just going to the toilet but she started moving around beside the bed. I couldn't see properly coz it was dark but I thought she was going in my bag, so I kept looking. Well.......next thing all I see is a white wrinkly bum in my face!!!!! She was changing her pants - what?!?!?!?!?!? I was so confused and couldn't believe I had just seen an old ladys bum! She got back into bed and went to sleep - weird. About an hour later the exact same thing happened again, a quick beep, then a change of pants!!!! What was an old lady with a toilet problem doing in a 5 bed dorm???? Surely she would have her own room!!!!!!! YUK!
The next morning I woke up to see a plastic bag filled with pants at the side of her bed. I ran to the toilet to get ready and didn't want to go back in the room. I had to though, to get my suitcase. The smell was awful! OH MY GOD! I grabbed my things and couldn't get out of the room quick enough! It was the most bizarre experience ever! Still can't quite get my head around it! Funny to look back on though - hee hee.
It was then time to board the 'Magic' bus and head to Queenstown.
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