The Long and Winding Road......

Well, I didn’t get a chance to finish my trip details here in Kiwiland so since I have an hour or so here in Auckland, I might as well finish. I think in my last post I pretty much covered my North Island activities. I do need to post a picture or two. I had some pretty good meals in Auckland mostly seafood or lamb.

Now on to the South Island. If you are a fan of the LOTR movies, you’ll know that all three movies were filmed mostly on the South Island. The Hobbitville was on the North Island (kind of in the middle of the island, and the volcano scenes (can’t remember where the place is called in the book) were also filmed on the south side of the North Island. Everything else was on the South Island. I got there on the weekend so I had a little bit of time to look around. I went to the West Coast which was beautiful. From Christchurch it is a couple of hours drive. You go over Arthur’s Pass and through the Alps. It is quite incredible. The only thing that I can liken it to are the Canadian Rockies up by Banff and Jasper. The sand on the beaches is black. As you drive south it is all bush (which I would call rainforest). I was going to title this blog entry as “The road of a thousand one lane bridges”. Every few miles (or “K”s as they say here) you have this narrow bridge. Usually they alternate on what direction yields. I’ll have to post some pictures. The only disappointing part of the whole trip was that it was raining the entire time. It is no wonder because you can look at the surrounding area to see how much rain they get. They say that it rains pretty much EVERY day. I stopped in a couple of the small towns to have a look around. The highlight was my stop in Franz Josef. There are two large glaciers here (one in Franz and the other in Fox Glacier). I was excited to see this even though it was raining. So I switched my sandals for my running shoes and set off. It was raining pretty hard but I didn’t mind (at that point). Beautiful, large waterfalls all along were fascinating. The hike to the terminal face of the glacier was a couple of miles up. By the time I reached it, I was SOAKED. There were a number of “smart” people that were part of a tour. They were decked out in their rain/snow gear. Next time I go, I’ll try one of those tours. They actually take you up ON to the glacier. It looks pretty cool. Well, I couldn’t take it anymore and I headed back. Here I was, the stupid American in shorts, walking along with people with either umbrellas or at least winter type gear. Oh well. On to the next site. Close to the next glacier is Lake Matheson. The reason that I went there is this is “supposed” to be one of the picture perfect places in all of New Zealand. From the lake you are “supposed” to be able to see Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman the two highest peaks in New Zealand. Well, you can imagine all I saw was clouds and rain. Not a problem. It was so beautiful, there was no one around and I had nothing better to do. I had dinner back in Franz Josef. By the time I made it all the way back to Christchurch, it was pretty late.