Today we had a six plus hour drive ahead of us to reach Franz Josef. Before the trip we’d debated on perhaps stopping somewhere earlier overnight and breaking the drive up, but that ate into too much time at Franz Josef and the glacier adventures, so we decided to just write the day off, pretty much, and get there in all haste.
As yesterday was such a long day, we lazed in bed a little later than we should have, and set off for our first stop (Queenstown) at about 10.30. At Queenstown we needed petrol, and breakfast.
We got there about 12.30 (1pm by the time we’d gotten petrol and parked), had lunch at a Mexican restaurant (Quesadilla’s.Yum.), and did a quick hunt at the local gift shops for some prezzies I’d promised to bring back.
3pm, and we set off again for the 4.5 hours drive to Franz Josef. The many in the Mexican restaurant told us we were mad for thinking it would be that short, he said more like 6 hours, but I was determined to prove him wrong.
We stopped a couple of times for scenic photos, but not many. Most notably we stopped at the Gates of Haast:
But generally took pics and movies whilst driving:
At around 19:30 (4.5 hours drive :-p ) we arrived at Franz Josef, found the place we were staying and dropped off our bags. We were a little put out to find it was a bed and breakfast (essentially staying in a room in someone’s house), as we usually like the privacy of self-contained units, but we’re determined to make the most of it. I suppose this is a lesson in reading the website booking fully before clicking, but the place is quite posh, and the hosts seem nice. Hopefully we’ll all get along by the end of the four nights stay and will be sad to leave :-).
We went out for tea at a Thai place, quite nice, we both had friend rice dishes, and as there’s no kitchen in our room, will probably be eating there again at some point ;-)
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