Brisbane to Christchrch
Arrived at the airport at 6:20am for the 8:20 flight to Christchurch. Went through imigration and boarded our flight. Just as we started taxiing the pilot mentioned that we would be departing 5 minutes early.
We got to the end of the taxiing position and waited for 20 minutes, we were then told they had a fault show up on one of the instruments. We then taxied back to the terminal as they tried something else, so all in all we sat on the tarmack for an hour.
Then were to to disembark the plane and given a food voucher to get a snack. We then watched our laugage being unloaded fromt he plane and where told that we had to go back through to emmigration and collect our bags.
Back up to departures and reline up at the Air New Zealand ticketing counter (the whole plane). After waiting 1.5 hours we got to the front of the queue and got put on the flight to Auckland in 15 minutes time.
We raced through customs and security (where they promptly took off me my newly purchased 200mls of Bailey I bought at duty free that morning - not happy Jan) rushed to the gate and just made it in time.
We finally made it to Auckland about 9.45pm, then queued up again to get the voucher for our accomodation at the Auckland Novatel across the road. Grabbed a quick bite at the left over buffet at the restaurant then headed upstairs for a shower and sleep.
Day 2 - Monday, 6-Feb-2012
This time the flight to Christchurch was uneventful = yeah!!!
Grabbed our hire car (which ended up being a hybrid = so quiet) and headed for our long trip to Fox Glacier.
First stop Arthurs Pass (we had planned to do a walk - but didn't have time now) so grabbed some lunch and looked around the Information centre.
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| Kea |
Continued the drive and after a few hours stopped for a rest at Hokitika, small beach side community along the coast. The town is noted for its jade.
The beach here is typical of the westcost, lots of grey rocks. We finally booked into our accomodation at Fox Glacier after another few hours drive south.
Had a quick look around town and headed towards Lake Matherson. Unfortunately the weather was cloudy so the views were not that good.
We had a nice meal at the Lake Matherson Cafe then headed back to our room for an early night.
Day 3 - Tuesday, 7-Feb-2012
The day stared of cloudy so we didn't hold much hope for our helikike at 11:50am.
We headed back north to Franz Joseph Glacier and for a while the clouds cleared and we had a great view of the glacier. We started the walk to glacier lookout but had to head back to the car to grab a quick lunch before heading back to Fox for the Heli-hike.
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| Franz Joseph |
Unfortunately by the time we got back to Fox the cloud had filled in and the heli-hike was cancelled.
We we given the option of 2:50pm or 8:50am (on Wednesday) trips in exchange, we took the 2:50pm option.
We dicided to hang around town until the trip, after a while it started raining so we thought we would see if we could swap to the morning trip instead luckily we got the last 2 spots.
We decided to head towards the Gillespie's Beach (25 Km away) as there had been blue skies towards the west all day. We were greeted to another grey rocky beach with beautiful clear blue water.
Around 4:30pm the rain stopped in Fox Glacier township, so we decided to do the galcier terminal walk. After a short drive we arrived at the car park and were greeted to some good views, we maded it to the terminal lookout when the clouds started clearing and the sun came out.
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| Fox Glacier |
The views were good and we spent around an hour taking photopgraphs.
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| Fox Glacier |
Back to town for dinner then a quick drive to Lake Matherson for some senic photographs of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman.
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Day 4 - Wednesday, 8-Feb-2012
This was going to be a big day, the skies were clear so it looked like the heli-hike (the Flying Fox) would happen (scheduled to finished around 1pm), we then had a 380km driver to Queenstown over twisty mountain roads to look forward too.
We ended up having picture postcard weather. The chopper ride up to the glacier was fun and we where the first load up.
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| Maria in the Helicopter |
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| View from the helicopter |
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| On the Glacier |
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| Inside an Ice Cave looking up |
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| Ice Cave |
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| Looking up the Glacier |
Checked into the St Mortiz hotel and grabbed some Chinese down the road.
Gallery, Slideshow
