Drought, what drought ?

Yesterday we left Queenstown, with sadness as we had really enjoyed it there and had stayed there four extra days over our originally planned three.

It was a long drive to Franz Josef, so we stopped a few times on the way.

Most enjoyable stop was at Wanaka where we visited the famous Puzzle World.

It tells you something about traffic in New Zealand that in the whole 400km drive to Franz Josef on single carriageway road we didn't need to overtake a single other vehicle. Most of the time there were no other vehicles to see.

It was raining when we got to Franz Josef and this morning when we woke all we could hear was the  incessant rain beating against the motel room roof and windows. It was a sorry sight. 270 days of rain a year here. At 12:30 when we turned up for the half day glacier hike, it was still pouring down.

The tour company supplied all the kit needed including rain coats, hiking boots, hats, gloves, over trousers and crampons for walking on the ice. 

It was only a short drive to the glacier car park, and we set off, a group of about thirty nine, which was further split down into three groups.

Fast, slow and old fogies. We decided to go in the second group because we are not kids anymore but we didn't want them to think we were completely geriatric

Once on the glacier the rain seemed to ease (or maybe we were just getting used to it) and we started to enjoy the experience of walking on a glacier, which was made much easier with the crampons.  When we got back to the town, we went for a dip in the hot pools which was an extremely enjoyable end to the day.

Tomorrow we are heading for Nelson and hopefully sunshine for five days and then we will be crossing over to the North Island