Queenstown to Franz Josef

Photos

We all know that today was just a long coach ride and it was. It did not started out well and quickly went bad. New Zealand has some remarkable landscapes and we appreciated them as well as we could from the back row of a 50-person coach being driven at breakneck speeds around narrow hairpin turns. I feel as if I have shaken baby syndrome, or my brain stem has almost been rattled loose from my brain. It has just not been a well-designed trip. I questioned our Kensington agent about this portion of the trip repeatedly but I think he had less knowledge about it than I did, so it is what it is. I cannot recommend this to anyone! And yet we sat outside the Novotel Lakeside this morning and watched 100s of people load huge coaches all bound for Milford Sound. I guess not only is it deemed an acceptable use of time but it is popular. So, maybe we are just too jaded and should stay home more. That is our thinking right now.

So, we stopped several times for breaks and we got to take a little scenic walk. We stopped for tea time at a salmon farm. We changed bus drivers at Thunder Falls. We got to Scenic Hotel in Franz Josef in time to take a shuttle for $12.50 return pp to take a 40-minute round trip walk to see the Franz Josef glacier. Again, I guess we are jaded. It was just another glacier. We wouldn't take an 8-hour coach ride to see it. But we did.

We shopped some, ate some ice cream, came back into town from the glacier and ate dinner at Snake Bite Brewery. It was good.

We get to sleep in tomorrow as our coach won't pick us up until around 9am. We drive to Greymouth by hopefully 1:15pm because the coach replacing the canceled TranzAlpine Train leaves for Christchurch is at 1:30pm. We should get to Christchurch by 8pm or so. Christchurch is where we end our New Zealand trip. It hasn't been all bad, but it hasn't been very good either. The trip, not the country. New Zealand is awesome!

Photos