! Cattle stop ahead

6 Quick and Easy Steps to turn a 4 ½ Hour Drive into a 6 Hour Drive

1. Take a scenic route on the highest road in New Zealand

2. Stop to take in the scenery

3. Eat PB & J’s by the side of Lake Wanaka

4. Stop to take in scenery

5. Watch the sun set over the West Coast

6. Stop to take in scenery

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Yesterday we drove from Queenstown to Franz Josef, a small township near the Franz Josef Glacier where we’ll be staying for two nights.  We finally met up with the rest of our party in the morning, so now the total comes to six people in two cars.  Sarah, Gray, and myself in Master Thor and Kate, Carolyn, and Allison in the other car.  The plan was to sort of caravan up there, but the we ended up stopping in different places a couple times and after lunch we were separated until Franz Josef.

Our map estimated roughly a 4 and half hour drive, but, this being by far the best scenery we’ve driven through so far, we had to stop multiple times to take it all in and capture so pictures. 

Instead of taking Highway 6 around the mountains to Wanaka, we took a high scenic road through the mountains straight there.  This was also, as Gray informed me, the highest road in NZ.  And probably the windiest (like a snake, not a day) and Sarah almost got a little carsick… but she pulled through, like a real champ.

The longest rest was on the shore of Lake Wanaka where we rode some unicycle, threw around the rugby ball, and ate sandwiches and saltines.  It was also another day of fantastic weather, so we hung around longer than we realized.

After lunch the two cars got separated for the third time (the girls had a habit of suddenly disappearing from the rear view mirror) and we just did our own thing until we met back up with them at the hostel in Franz Josef.  On the road we saw a massive waterfall of bluest blue and later rounded a corner to find the sun just setting on the horizon, so we stopped for a spell to take pictures and video.  It ranked up there on Top Road Trip Drives of All Time.

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If you’ve never seen a glacier up close and personal before then the first thing you’ll most likely notice is that it looks like Bruce Wayne’s mountainous climb in Batman Begins.  Then you’ll realize that the mountainous climb was actually next to a glacier, and that’s why they look so similar.

Batman Begins

Franz Josef Glacier

Ok.  So that might just be me, but I was really excited about the similarities.  I felt like I was going to visit Raz al Guhl myself, just with ten other people and a paid guide.  But the glacier hike was probably one of the coolest things I’ve done so far (pun definitely intended). 

We were hiking over the frozen terrain for close to seven hours, climbing through ice tunnels, scaling blue cliffs, and shimming through tiny crevices.  Gray and I were in the first group so many times we had to stop to make a path for ourselves and for the others to follow.

For example, once of the paths in one of the giant cracks had fallen out, so our guide had to climb on top and break of huge masses of ice into the wedge for us then to walk on.  It was crazy cool. 

Because Gray and I did the all day hike we ended later than the girls, who were already almost to our next stop in Greymouth, so we got in our already packed up Master Thor and headed after them.  It was a surprisingly short drive to the Global Village near the city centre, which is probably one of my fave hostels so far.  Today we're leaving Greymouth for Nelson where some of Gray's extended family is cooking us a steak dinner.  So excited for that.  Catch up with you later!  The trip's almost over... but it's been great and we still have a few full days left.  Cheers!