Franz Joseph

Dear all

Today the weather was a little kinder to us and we left our little rainforest oasis in Franz Josef village itself and ventured out to the glacier to have a look around. The Maori originally called this glacier Ka Roimatao Hine Hukatere - Tears of the Avalanche Girl. The story is about a young girl whose lover falls off the peaks and her tears of her loss formed the frozen river. Sadly the glacier is more known as Franz Josef named in honour of an Austrian Emperor, when first explored by Julius Hasst in 1865. Unlike so many others this glacier started to advance again in 1985 growing a further 2km until 1996 when it started to back pedal!

The walk out to the terminal face was about 35 minutes and although the glacier is much bigger that it is at Fox it is also quite steep at the front so it was hard to the see it in all its splendour, but its still pretty impressive.

Back in the village we stopped off to watch Flowing West a documentary showing the flow of water from the sea to the mountains and back on a gigantic screen. The cinematography is amazing even if the music was a bit like 80's cheese!

Along the coast north of FJ is some stunnning scenery and some little amusing stops in the national park including the very amusing Pukekura (population 2!), which included the Bushmans centre replete with rustic cafe - they speciality game pie (made of possum meat!) and an amusing possum museum (which appears to be dislike, the possums that is!). O

utside they had some cute goats, a wallaby, some deer and a family of Thar. Across the road is the inappropriately name Puke pub which specialises in road kill in its wild food restaurant with delights such as 'wheel-tread possum' & head light delight. Yum yum !

Our next stop was one of those moments that you know that fate had a hand in. Ross in itself is famous for past glories namely the unearthing of NZ's largest gold nugget, Honourable Roddy, who weighed in at 2.77kg in1907, since then the gold mines have all closed and it now has a series of refurbished old cottages and a really nice waterchase walk around some diggings, caves, tunnels and the cemetery!

 Being a little 'gold towned' out I had a wonder into a jade carvers shop/studio & thats where I met Steve. He is not only an extremely talented carver but also takes part in loads of ironman & endurance type racing usually coming in the top 3 for his age group and in top 20 overall. Thats fair enough I hear you say until I tell that he is over 55 and only has one leg. What an inspiration and a totally top guy. His jade caving is amazing and he has a number of designs he has made his own (outside of my little backpacker budget), but I did purchase a simple caved necklace which I will really trreasure. Its not often I get the chance to meet a truely talented person, but today was my day.

Our final stop was Greymouth, a truely uninspiring town, full of commercial buildings and backpacker hotels, but our hostel (we parked in the carpark!) was lovely and a real treat after wet and dreary campsites!

Tomorrow we head up to Pancake Rocks. Don't know what I'm talking about - well you will have to wait until tomorrow then!

Night all

Sara