Monday 9 June 2014

Punakaiki, glacier walking in Franz Josef and Wanaka

12 - 15 May

In the morning we headed south through the Buller Gorge to the 'wild' West Gorge, which stretches for over 600km along one of the top 10 drives in the world.  We stopped off at a few places along the way before heading onto Punakaiki, a town famous for its blowholes and Pancake Rocks.  

The next morning, whilst the others were off making bone or greenstone necklaces, we went off to a local beach in search of our own greenstone but sadly we didn't find any!  Our evening stop was in Franz Josef, a town famous for its glaciers.  A few of us opted to stay in another hostel purely for the freebies including. BBQ, wifi and spa.  The local area isn't easily accessible by foot so when they offered to take us over to Lake Matheson, we jumped at the chance.  For me, this was one of the prettiest places on the west coast.  Picturesque views particularly when the sun bounces off the snow-capped mountain tops.  Although as Esmae and Axel (Holland/Belgium) found out, the water was cold!!  The view of the Fox Glacier is also one not to be missed.

Our time in Wanaka was short but sweet.  Seb (Banberg), Lilly, Yohann and I went for a walk by the lake before playing uno and drinking wine with the others.  The next few days went by in a bit of a blur, we left Wanaka and headed for Queenstown via the Nevis Bungy.  Although I'm too much of a wimp to do one, I did fancy the swing but sadly due to my back, I couldn't!  Queenstown was a lot of fun and it felt great to be back.  After a bit of shopping with the girls and a few drinks in our room (with everyone- literally) we headed for the pub crawl and danced the night away.  I've loved spending time with this group and couldn't have asked for a better group of people to explore this country with so....thank you!

Next stop: Auckland...final stop in NZ


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