Haast, South Island, NZ

Unfortunately, because Birdsong Backpackers is located right next to the State Highway, we had to use earplugs last night (Denise put hers in before going to sleep and Corey put his in around 4 am). The backpackers has a nice homey, alpine lodge-like feel to it, and the shared bathrooms were fine, with a shower, toilet and sink in each, one upstairs and one downstairs. In addition to our usual breakfast fare of cereal (Nutrigrain today) and yoghurt, Denise had feijoas and we both had toasted hot cross buns. Denise bought a print of the kiwi painting done by the owner, before leaving Birdsong. We booked our lodging tonight in Haast at the Hokitika i-site and walked around "downtown" which had lots of arts and crafts shops, greenstone or jade-carving shops (big on the West Coast of the South Island, and sacred to the Maori ), glass-blowing, etc. Corey also visited the sock machine museum (who knew?!).

On our way south to Ross, we stopped at a lake for a short walk, and in Ross, Denise tried gold-panning one more time at the visitor center, but only found a few gold flakes. Continuing onwards, we passed over scores of one-laned bridges -- some are so long that there are pull-offs in the middle of the bridge to pass!

After passing through more small towns on the way to the glaciers, we finally arrived in Franz Josef and had yummy burgers and "chips" at the Full of Beans cafe. We went on a couple of short walks to see the Franz Josef glacier from different vantage points, including Peter's Pool - where Corey promptly took tons of pictures to capitalize on the glacier / reflecting pool combination.

We then drove a short distance (about an hour -- that's short by New Zealand standards) to the Fox glacier. At the Fox glacier, we did a 1 hour return hike to the edge of the glacier- the deep valley was quite impressive!

We saw a beautiful sunset on the drive further south to Haast. As soon as we arrived in the tiny town of Haast and checked into the Wilderness Accommodation motel, we were promptly told to buy groceries next door ASAP as they were closing for the night. This was at about 7 pm! They were closing up shop while Denise was browsing the limited selection of goods, and we ended up with canned corn, spaghetti and pasta sauce, and yoghurt and milk for breakfast tomorrow morning. We cooked in the motel kitchen, which had a lot of fruit flies in it- kind of gross. We gave our clothes to the manager and paid for a wash and dry while we cooked and ate dinner. After dinner we watched a TERRIBLE movie on TV in our room, called "American Dreamz", with Hugh Grant and Mandy Moore. It must have been one of the most awful movies we have ever seen, and Corey has watched A LOT of bad movies, so that's saying something! We pondered our options for our Milford Sound cruise in a couple of days, and drifted off to sleep with the bad movie still floating around in our heads.

View Larger Map