KTMusings

Today we hiked on a glacier! This was the one thing we knew we wanted to do on this trip before we knew much about New Zealand. So we were a little disappointed that we woke up Sunday morning to hear rain on the roof of our little cottage. Regardless, we put on lots of layers, packed lunch and water, and drove over to the Franz Josef Glacier Guides offices. We all had our own hiking boots and begrudingly (later we'd be happy) took the ones from the guides. They also outfitted us with waterproof pants, waterproof jackets, and wool hats, socks, and mittens. We also got crampons (metal ice picks to wear on the bottom of our boots) in a nice fanny pack to carry up to the glacier. Then onto the bus to drive us over towards the glacier: First, we hiked for about 15 minutes through a rainforest: Then, we could see it! Look at how excited the Bohlens are, despite the rain: We then hiked about 2.5km over rocks up to the base of the glacier. The last .5km or so was up a very steep pile of...

We knew, when planning out our trip, that this would be a long travel day - we were going from Wellington on the North Island to Franz Josef, which is almost halfway down the west coast of the South Island. What we didn't take into account was how long the ferry from the North to South Island would take! We were up early on Saturday to get in line for the ferry at 7:15am. We got a video of us getting on the ferry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ3vl6ttsiI Once on the ferry we staked out seats in the cafeteria and hunkered down for the 3 hour trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WeerdRSYjM Here's a map view of our journey: It was foggy and overcast leaving Wellington: Partway through the trip we did see a rainbow: Ryan braved the wind and weather to go up on the deck and get some pictures: And video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4qskQFjRFk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggP0IsVrIo0 As I mentioned, it was a loooong driving day ... over 500km. We continued with our routine...

We spent the whole day in Wellington and gave Bruce (our car) a rest for the day. Dana had found a gf bakery to go to for breakfast, so we left the hotel and wandered down Cuba Street. They have a cool bucket fountain in the middle of the street (it's a pedestrian mall) that filled up and splashed water on passersby. Sisters, walking down Cuba St: After discovering that the gf bakery was no longer open, we found a food court and all grabbed breakfast and coffee. Then we continued our walk down to the Te Papa museum on the waterfront. The museum was really nice - very modern architecture and cool exhibits. One we were really looking forward to seeing after reading about it was this interactive one - it had a map of NZ on the floor and as you stepped on a square, pictures of the area showed up on the screens around the room. It wasn't quite as cool as we expected, but interesting nontheless: After a couple hours in the museum, we walked along the waterfront and found a Mac...