TRANSALPINE TRIP #4

 FRANZ JOSEF

Oh, hello. You're still here then?

Good, you're just in time for episode four in the Transalpine series.

We headed south on Saturday morning having a leisurely drive on the excellent Westland roads. Roads in the South Island are generally better than those that we have up north. Up here heavy transport trucking has fucked the road surfaces creating difficult and dangerous driving conditions with potholes, fissures, surface stripping and under-road damage that gets 'cosmetically' mended. It's time that infrastructure was seriously looked at in New Zealand with either rail networks being reinstated or transport vehicles being charged higher road transport fees so that the roads can be better maintained. But - I digress.

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin

        T.S. Eliot 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' 

Near Hokitika we checked out Treetops the treetop level forest walkway and zip line. This looked pretty good but it was drizzling so we decided to kept going south with the intention of maybe having a go on the way back on Sunday.

Richard wouldn't like this but it occurred to me that Robert would like to take his family there to give them a go.*

We arrived at Franz Josef late morning and found and checked into our hotel the Te Waonui Forest Retreat.

It's a pretty nice hotel, well appointed with comfortable rooms with bush views. It's owned by Scenic Circle. I'd booked in the Scenic Circle Franz Josef Glacier hotel but, a few days earlier they sent me an email saying that they'd closed this hotel for the winter and that we'd have a free upgrade to their other hotel the Te Waonui Forest Retreat. This of course is marketing bullshit. There's no way that they would have 'just closed for winter' and they took the booking knowing that they'd flick us on to their other hotel. I reckon that it's a way of capturing the limited tourist clientele by having two properties to advertise instead of one - a way to keep ahead of the opposition.

Double the chance

They were at pains to tell us how lucky we were to get the upgrade to "5-star" accommodation but a quick internet search showed that they've been doing this for months. Scenic Circle is in trouble having laid off a lot of staff and closed hotels and the dismal dining experience that night showed this. Never mind - the room was very nice and facilities and service top notch.

We dropped off our bags and headed off to see Franz Josef glacier. It wasn't far away and we parked the car and checked out the walks, doing a couple that got us reasonably close to the (shrinking) glacier.

The walking tracks are well maintained - a credit to whichever tourist board is responsible, like the Punakaiki tracks.

Glacier in background with a rainbow.

I played around with the phone settings taking about a dozen of the same view. Here are a few of them:

The Old Girl takes better photos than me. When she's back from Christchurch I'll get her to download them to this computer so I can put together the slide show for visitors.

The viewing areas are on fragile ground overlooking the river valley so there are barriers set up to discourage idiots. A cut-out of a ranger is quite effective.

This reminded me of this old guy ignoring the signs on Matiu/Somes Island:

Some (Matiu) people huh!

*** Coming soon! TRANSALPINE TRIP #5 ****

* Note : As this is a long post it's important to mention Robert at least once to maintain his interest.