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Our following days exploration of Hokitika took us around town and towards the mountains for a few short walks at Lake Kaniere, Dorothy Falls and Hokitika Gorge. Hokitika was easily the highlight of the day with its milky blue green waters and swing bridge backed by cliffs and fine rimu forest. We spent the evening in a place called Hari Hari, an area well known for police and its speed traps, needless to say we made it through unscathed. Continuing further south along the west coast, we arrived at the small town of Franz Josef to book our glacial walk for the next day, plus the Hot Springs for the that evening. Not content on waiting to see the glacier the next day, we went for a little walk up to the glaciers terminal face to see what we were letting ourselves in for, I hummed a LOTR tune continuously there and back - think it's beginning to really piss off Emma! The evening spent in the recently built Hot Springs was brilliant. We bathed in three pools of different temperatures for ages and came out looking like prunes. It was again very and romantic and much needed on another cold day in N.Z.
Despite Franz Josef being known as New Zealand's wettest township, we woke to find perfectly blue skies for our glacial hike. Once we were suited and booted for our half day trek, we headed up to the terminal face once again but this time with our group and guide called Turtle. The glacial walk was slow in parts but epic in others. We shuffled and slid through newly formed crevices and pulled ourselves up and down through holes in the ice. We returned from the walk, wet, freezing and yet elated at our achievement (of not dying, which is actually no joke, cause someone did 3 weeks later). Our campsite for the evening had the nice touch of a spa, which was sorely needed as thawing out was proving to be difficult.
Our journey to Haast took us via Fox Glacier and Lake Matheson. Not many people leave New Zealand without a picture of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman mirrored in Lake Matheson's waters, we took several and got a little competitive to whom could take the best picture - Emma won - booooo. Fox Glacier was just as an impressive as Franz but Fox was more shaded, which made us happy about our choice of glacier to hike.
Haast itself was a bit of a non-event, but the roads surrounding the town more than made up for it's lack of activities/sites and sounds. The aptly named waterfall of Roaring Billy Falls and Thunder Falls really lived up to their names and a few panoramas were taken but none did them justice. Every lake, river and stream that we keep on coming across, appears to be so picturesquely blue and inviting but we are yet to have got brave enough to take a dip.
Heading further south to even lower bitterly cold temperatures, we came to Lake Wanaka via the highway and not over the mountain pass in case Fred gave up on us. Despite the weather forecast predicting a sunny day, Lake Wanaka was shrouded in low lying clouds, hiding the landscapes stunning mountains views of the Southern Alps that would have laid in the foreground. Having been denied the opportunity to marvel upon the Southern Alps for the afternoon, Emma persuaded us to visit the Stuart Landsborough Puzzling World to cheer me up. Not that me and Emma are competitive in anyway, we raced each other to see who could complete the outdoor maze first. Regrettably I have to say Emma won and surprisingly for me, I was very gracious in defeat despite Emma's taunting. The illusions inside the puzzle world were quite impressive, with faces that followed you around a room, tilted rooms that made you feel gravity had lost control and my favourite, an insight into how they filmed some of the LOTR scenes involving Hobbits and human beings! Arriving later that day in Queenstown in the dark was definitely not the wisest decision as it made finding our Department of Conservation campsite pretty difficult and little treacherous.
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