Castle Hill to Franz Josef Glacier:

A rare sheep-less field:
We stopped to take a few pictures at Arthur's Pass National Park. While I was researching for our trip, I came across quite a few people who had rented camper vans and spent weeks just driving around the South Island exploring. At the time I thought it was a little weird to just drive with no activities planned or destinations in mind, but now I see the appeal (of wandering aimlessly, not the camper van! I just can't get on board with that whole thing). There's so much to see and explore; I felt like we barely scratched the surface!
Classic sign pic.
I'm glad we dug the GoPro out of the suitcase at this point because you can really capture so much more with the wide angle setting!
New Zealand is full of scenic lookout points and I'm pretty sure we pulled off at approximately 90% of them, but the one below was probably my favorite. If it wouldn't have been 55 degrees we would have stayed up there a bit longer to admire the view!

At some point shortly after Arthur's Pass Peter was getting really tired. Like I mentioned in my previous post, we took an overnight flight from Melbourne and then Peter immediately started driving when we arrived in the morning, so it was a long day for him. We decided to pull over for awhile and he took a half hour nap while I poked around and took some pictures. This was the first time either of us had ever had to pull over to rest while driving long distances, but better safe than sorry. The roads in New Zealand are often narrow and winding, so it's not as if you can hit cruise and sit back. One piece of advice I have for anyone planning their own New Zealand road trip is to factor in lots of extra driving time. You'll want to take it easy on the roads and the speed limit is pretty low anyway, so it takes much longer to get from one place to another than you'd expect. Factoring in extra time allows for scenic stops and quick hikes as well as a short nap if necessary. Alternately, you could travel with someone who also knows how to drive on the left side of the road and switch off ;). Sorry, Peter!

Franz Josef Glacier

The path leading up to the glacier was really pretty, but much longer than I expected. It was one of those situations where you see the destination and think "oh, it's just over there!" and then walk for what seems like eternity and realize you're not any closer. It probably didn't help that we were running on little to no sleep.
I quit about three quarters of the way to the official viewing point, but Peter continued on until the path ended and got this close-up. Apparently depending on temperature and rain, among other factors, the glacier shrinks and expands from season to season and year to year. Right now it has receded a bit, but in the past has extended all the way down to the path.
We considered taking a scenic helicopter flight that landed on the glacier, but decided against it for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it was already late in the day and we likely would have needed a reservation. But mainly, we thought for a second and decided we didn't really want to part with hundreds of dollars to walk around in the snow. We've suffered through enough Minnesota winters to find any joy in snow at this point!

Finally whipped out the selfie stick!

More New Zealand adventures:

Christchurch to Castle Hill:

Castle Hill

Solo pictures are so awkward. Have no fear, I remembered the selfie stick on this trip! At this point it was still packed away in the suitcase, but it will make plenty of appearances in future posts so stay tuned. Side note: flats were an awesome choice for climbing around rocks. Not.
The rocks/boulders/whatever they are were HUGE. For scale, Peter is the black blob standing in the open space below:
Like I said, I've never seen LOTR, so I was more focused on the beautiful mountains across the road:
We headed back to the car to continue our journey, which I'll detail in my next post!

We're back from New Zealand! I am going to work on downloading all of our many photos onto the computer this weekend and will hopefully have some posts ready soon! If you just can't take the suspense, head over to my Instagram to see a preview of our trip!

We are off to the airport to catch our flight to New Zealand shortly, but just wanted to post a few pictures of the amazing feast my friends Katie and Janet made for us last night!