I have discovered that our trip entailed seeing a great number of amazing things
and places, more than can really go on a single web page, so I've decided to break up the
photo galleries based on the progress of our travels. This page covers our fourth stop on South Island - Frans Josef Glacier:
It seemed that every stop on our trip was more interesting than the last, which may partly be the nature of human experience,
but New Zealand is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen. Two islands that are something like 80 miles across at their
widest point have multiple environments and things are rarely, (if ever) found elsewhere.
We left Lake Wanaka and began to travel up the southern coast of South Island. Our destination, Frans Josef Glacier, was on the
opposite side of our first hiking stop, Mt. Cook. There are four tropical glaciers in the world and two of them are on South Island.
There's something powerful about an area that reminds you of Hawaii, but with two huge ice sheets on the local mountain range.
We spent three days in FJG, partly to catch our breath and do some laundry before we headed to the ferry that would take us to North
Island, and partly to just enjoy the local scene a little. There were three high-end restaurants in FJG so we sampled all of them.
I also tried another two examples of delicious NZ beers. Our hotel room looked like it sat in the middle of a rainforest, (as our
pictures will demonstrate,) and we had very nice accommodations.
One interesting note: There's a local controversy at FJG regarding the helicopters that take people to the top of the glaciers.
(We did not use them ourselves.) I saw a couple of anti-helicopter bumper-stickers, and when I focused on them, I realized the helicopters
take off and land all day long. I could see being annoyed by them if I lived there and was trying to do something like write books.
