Before I get to Franz Josef, let's talk about the interesting journey here! Noreen and I boarded a bus from the YHA Wanaka to Franz Josef. We had heaps of stops, as the Kiwis would say. We stopped for a view, we stopped for the restroom, we stopped for coffee, we stopped for other people's,who weren't even on the bus', medical emergencies. My favorite of stops had to be a stop smack in the middle of nowhere so the drivers can do a switch-a-roo. Our new driver boarded the bus and started to do a headcount. The count told him he was missing one person so he counted again and then again. He resulted to doing a roll call of names. We were all present. Then he asked does anyone suspect their neighbor or buddy is missing? Nope we answered. Then someone said, "we're in the middle of nowhere.. where would they go?" Valid point. My favorite of points was from a woman that said, "let's take a vote to stay or go!" You had to laugh. Eventually the bus driver agreed to continue on the journey. We're finally on our way to finish off this 7 hour journey or so we thought. Five or so minutes in, this man with a coat that was patched up like he had come back from a war walked to the front of the bus and asked to be let off, in the middle of nowhere. The driver let him out and NOW we're on our way!
We had planned two full days in Franz Josef but after the initial hour assessment of a town, I decided one was enough. Luckily, we were able to move up our bus departure by a day, found accommodations for an extra night in Nelson and the YHA Franz Josef was nice enough to refund our money for the night we weren't going to be using. We spent our first night in a four bed girls dorm room. To our relief, we weren't stuck with the young folks. There was Keri-Ann from Toronto and Nelly from Germany who was stuck on the green KiwiE bus with a bunch of kids, all in the same age bracket or so. "You're 38?!" When I disclosed my age. Yes, the Asian genes! We joked about how nice it was to be with adults and then naturally, dating was the topic of discussion!
Folks that come to Franz Josef seem to come to wait and wait and just wait some more. Waiting for the clouds to clear so that the glacier helicopters would take off. Noreen read in trip advisor that someone waited five days!! Here! In this 1.5 street town. I would have taken it as a sign that it wasn't meant to be.
Luckily for us, the clouds cleared up enough for us to get a decent viewing of the glacier via the Franz Josef walk. After the 1.5 hour trek, we found a nice older couple from the Netherlands to give us a ride back to town. We had an afternoon (3pm) heli flight up to the glacier but when we initially went to check in, the pilots were just hanging out twiddling their thumbs. The weather was not favorable but anything can happen they say! Half an hour later, checked in again, flights going up! Our backup was the 5pm trip and if not, then the 8am trip the next morning before our 9:10am ten hour bus ride. We lucked out as the weather Gods opened up enough for us to sneak in on the only day that we're here to do this. Being on top of the Franz Josef Glacier will probably one of the cooler experiences here. Just simply doing the glacier walk would not do this place justice!
Next up: Nelson enroute to Abel Tasman.
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