Thursday 21 November 2013

Day 20. Franz Josef


After an interesting night sleep (in our 8 bed dorm 6, 6, people snored) and after being woken up by the man above me jumping up at 5oclock after his alarm scared him, we awoke to a very cloudy and drizzly morning in the mountains. We’d already been warned our trip might be cancelled as the forecast wasn’t great but we went down to the counter and sure enough, nothing was running today. Instead we’ve rescheduled for tomorrow morning so we’re just going to spend another night here and cross our fingers, and our toes, that the forecast is right and tomorrow is sunny!
We booked ourselves into Axel and Cara’s hostel (rooms are in pretty high demand so the YHA one me and George got last night was now full) and then we all went to do our own bits and pieces around the tiny village. Axel went to check flights and his emails, Cara and George set off on the walk I wanted do, I’ll come back to why I opted not to later, while I went to The West Coast Wildlife centre. The centre was bigger than I’d expected and really informative without being dull, giving lots of information on the conservation work being done as well as information on the Glacier and the area’s gold mining past.  
The highlight was by far the chance to actually see some Kiwis though! They’re very cute. There’s no photos allowed, as Kiwi’s are nocturnal so it was very dark and loud noises, including talking and camera noises, scare them. It was great to see such an endangered animal up close though!

I opted to not go on the walk because the weather forecast was set to get worse, and the closer you get to the glaciers the wetter and colder it was meant to be… Needless to say an hour later George and Cara turned up back at the hostel completely drenched and with purple lips!

The rest of the day was spent exploring the hostel a little, reading up on our next stop, Queenstown, and, obviously, dawdling away some time in a coffee shop with Axel.


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