First off I want to say Happy Thanksgiving from the future. We celebrated it with a 4.5 hour scenic train ride through the South Island. We began in Christchurch (on the east coast) which is a relatively flat area. It very much reminded us of Illinois minus the absence of corn and soybean fields. It wasn't more than 30 mins and we began to see the mountains ahead. One thing i noted that was kinda cool was that at railway crossings people had to wait for us. It was neat to be the train that was holding things versus being in the car and waiting . During the trip we passed over a couple gorges and the first bridge was a little scary. The bridges are very small and this one was over a really large gorge. Dan and I were feeling hungry so we soon took our first trek on the train. It was interesting moving between the cars and we grabbed our breakfast and headed back to our seats. We spent awhile taking pictures and taking in the scenery.
The train came out of the mountains (Southern Alps) and into Greymouth. This city has now become world known because of the Pike River Mine disaster. There wasn't much movement downtown just a few paper headlines and one window sign. The mining disaster will be remembered on New Zealand for our lifetimes and it is so weird that Dan and I have been in the country since it occurred. Dan and I were a little tired of restaurant food and so we went to the grocery store and made deli sandwiches instead. It go our rental car a little dirty but it was a nice change from the same ole restaurant food. We ate our meal and programmer the GPS and got on our way. We had a 2.5 hour drive into Franz Josef.
This drive was nothing like the North Island. First off the roads are more narrow, there were large straight aways (in the beginning). Eventually once we got off the west coast we had to do some mountain driving. This consisted of steep gradients and sharp curves. Some were marked as 25 km/h which is super slow. Io tired to take photos so I hope they show the sharp curves. We both needed a bathroom break and luckily there was a small little off shoot to Lake Ianthe. Here we took a couple pictures of the very large mountain lake.
Continuing on we made it to Franz Josef around 5 pm or so. We got settled in and relaxed a bit. Then we decided to take a walk and see the town. It is very small. We walked from our hotel to the end in 5 mins or so. We found the Glacier guides building and so we confirmed our booking and they gave us our tickets. We also went inside this Kiwi House. Since Franz Josef isn't very big we thought we could go see some Kiwi's. The employees told us that it would be best around 8 pm because they are very active at that time. The Kiwi bird is a nocturnal and flightless bird. This place has a nocturnal house set opposite of our schedule so we can observe the Kiwi's. We decided to go back to our hotel and make use of the laundry facilities and to try and finish the movie we began in Christchurch while we wait until 8.
We walked back to see the kiwis at 8 pm. We got into there area and had to adjust to the low light. Then we heard a ruffle in the bites and sure enough there was our first kiwi sighting. There were four total chicks and it was fun watching them. We found the biggest one dancing in the corner and thought that was a delight. We also observed two scuffles. Kiwi are anti-social and so they don't like to be bothered. A smaller chick messed with the biggest kiwi and so he had to be taught. Overall it was fun to see them playing and scavenging for food. Unfortunately no photos could be taken of the chicks because they are Rowi Kiwi who are an endangered species (all kiwi species are endangered) and the conservation society takes the kiwi eggs and hatches the chicks and helps them develop. Then they release them onto a predator free island and eventually back into the wild so they can help to increase the population. The chicks we saw are spending 6 months or so here before being released onto the island. So they want them to remain as wild as possible and so no photos can be taken. Also it is so dark that you wouldn't be able to see much.
Once we were done with the kiwis we decided we had better get some dinner. So we walked to a restaurant that Dan thought looked good only the kitchen was closed. It was only 9 pm and they already stopped serving. Seemed like a silly plan to me. So we went to the one other restaurant and thankfully it was open. We ordered a Hawaiian pizza and basket of fries. It should really be listed a mountain of fries because it was huge. We pigged out on those while mixing ketchup and mayo together. It was delicious. However we ate so many fries that when our pizza came I could only eat one piece. Dan stuffed three down and we took the rest home. We tried ( and I say tried) to finish our movie but it expired on us because stupid Apple only allows 24 hours to watch a movie and it never told us it was expiring so we thought this one was different. Partially stupid us and partially stupid Apple but oh well. We looked through the thumbnails of scenes and saw how The Karate Kid ended. Luckily we can get it from a Redbox for a dollar or from Netflix. So anyway that made us ready to sleep. We wanted to be nice and rested for our half day glacier hike.
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