The fact that the phone was still not charging in the morning made Dad quite upset and the best way to cheer him up was to drive over to the glacier and go for walk in the thick rainforest.
Before we went there we had to refuel with a big breakfast though.
We didn't drive straight to the Glacier walk but drove up a little side road where we saw a sign pointing to Glacier Lookout.
There were only a couple of cars there and we started our walk through the thick Rainforest.
It was extremely thick here and in some places you couldn't see more than 2 meters deep into the flora. On our walk we had to descent into a valley and passed lots of little creeks that all fed the river that was draining the Glacier a couple of kilometres up the valley.
Then we had to cross this river over an old suspension bridge, which even Mom enjoyed to walk.
Since we were quite far away from the car now and it wouldn't make sense to walk all the way back, Dad offered to go get the car and meet us further up at the parking area for the actual Glacier walk.
Mom and I continued our walk towards there and we pretty much arrived at the car park at the same time with Dad.
The shocking thing about this Glacier is it's speed. The speed it recedes. It is much quicker than most other glaciers.
In 1895 it was still at the old suspension bridge over that we crossed (with that big river underneath). In 1951 the end of the Glacier had mover about 1.5 km further inland and now it is a further 1.5 km shorter.
To go and see it properly we had to walk up a little path (2.6 return from the car park) to get to a viewing platform from where we could see parts of the still enormous Ice Giant.
Unfortunately visitors are not allowed to go any closer or even onto the Glacier without a guide. If we wanted to put foot onto the Ice shelf itslef we would have to rent a Helicopter to do so. Not today.
After this nice little excursion we headed back to the town of Fox Glacier and rested with a lemonade to come up with plan of what's up next.
We still wanted to do the Kayaking, so we rang the Place in Okarito (where we had passed through yesterday) and booked a trip for the next day, with the condition of the weather being good.
The hiking we had done so far today wasn't enough, and we decided to drive to Lake Matheson to take a walk around it.
This lake, as nearly everything in this part of the country was formed by ice erosion.
A nice walk all in all but it started get cold and after a nice craft beer back at the little cafe we headed back to our Cottage, that we had extended for another night to take a bit of a rest.
Although yesterday's dinner was great we wanted to try some other place. It was called Cook's Saddle and had real nice atmosphere. It was very busy, but the good busy and to my own surprise I ordered a Ceasar's salad with Charcoal Chicken (as it looked so good at the neighbouring table).
On the morning before we set out on the road in our own (or rented) car we had a little bit of lie in and then quickly packed our bags to leave the room.
Check out time usually is 10 am here in New Zealand (and Australia as well).
We did make it just about and left our luggage at a sort of storage room of the little Motel.
Unfortunately the kettle in our room had leaked over night and we charged our phones and laptops right next to it on the kitchen shelf.
My Dads phone must have been soaking in the water for hours, so we had to take it all apart and let it dry off for a few hours.
Following the suggestion of Dave from yesterday we walked down to the little Museum in Greymouth. It had around 20000 historic Photographs of the area, the gold and coal rush, shipping, mining, floods and general way of life back in these days.
There were not just photos but also some exhibition pieces, like an old dive suit or a phone exchange. Not the Smithsonian but a very nice little Museum for this town.
After the hour we spent in there we had worked up the required appetite to visit Maggies Cafe (another suggestion of Dave from the pub) for breakfast.
This place had been finalist in the "Best Cafe of New Zealand" competition in 2013 and 2014 and I expected it to be similar to the Good ole News Cafe in Blackrock .... but..... it disappointed impressively. I had a chicken sandwich which was not anything special, service was alright but all in all it was an average cafe. We had much nicer breakfasts along the way in NZ already.
Anyway, it didn't hurt. After this we picked up the car at the Train station. The Avis employees were not as friendly and helpful as the GoRental people from the north Island and when we spotted some chipmarks around and wanted to point them out they refered to paragraph 24 a on the contract which stated: "chipmarks are not considered damage". Fair enough then.
Mom had a look at a shop where we have seen a nice T-Shirt and it even was reduced by 30 %, but unfortunately it was reduced to 90 $.
Even for a Merino Wool T-shirt this is still quite steep, so we passed.
When we reassembled the phone we noticed there as some mist in the camera lens but with some aircon blowout this had evaporated quickly and when turning it on all came up good. Looks like we saved the phone.
Since we were all mobile again with our car we drove up north along another great coast road to the Pancake rocks.
A quick walk around the Pancake rocks gave us a good idea.
Scientist are not fully sure how these rocks, that looked like stacked pancakes had formed but they sure looked interesting.
Followed up with a coffee we then left and drove south, through Greymouth and on to Okarito to find as this was suppose to be good place to do some Kayaking, but unfortunately we didn't find any accommodation and had to drive on.
There was a great, very basic camp ground and it would have been a good place to use one of these Jucy Vans that we had seen everywhere.
They are usually Toyota HiAce's or Previa's that have been refitted with beds, small kitchens and camping equipment.
These little vans don't seem to be that much more expansive than a normal car an are a real alternative. You could use them two days to sleep cheap, carry around you food and cook it and then every now and then when you need a shower you can park them easily like a normal car at motel and have a bit of Luxury.
Maybe next time.
Our next chance for a bed was either Franz Josef Glacier or Fox Glacier. From what we read, Fox Glacier was a smaller, more relaxed town which we preferred, so we drove straight through to there and quickly found a nice Lodge.
It was new, log cabin finished to a very high quality standard and there as a nice restaurant right next door.
There we had a great dinner. I feasted on a lovely Lamb chank served very fancy, standing up on a plate, and as it was a bit of small portion I had Spare ribs for desert. I felt a bit like a posh lion that evening.
To digest this great meal we decided to go for a little walk around town, but didn't get very far as it started to drizzle - and as we had travelled south quite a bit now it was getting colder as well.
Back at our logcabin we heated up with a cup of tea (just the open fireplace was missing) and caught up (only a little bit) on the writing.
Later we found out that Dads Phone didn't charge any more.
Seems like the water had corroded the contacts of the charger socket.
Our shuttle to the train station arrived just before 7 am.
On the way to Addington Station we picked up two more groups of people that also wanted to go to take the Tranzapline train.
Besides it being rainy and very uncomfortable the distance to the train would have been unwalkable even without the luggage, so it was a good decission to book the shuttle. The driver actually moved 30 years ago from the Netherlands to New Zealand and spoke a little German.
After we got out he told us " Das macht 10 Mark Bitte". But we paid him in Dollars.
The train station, that was located in a remote industrial estate was very small but also very modern and had big glass windows all around.
Surprisingly there was no coffee or snack stand to be seen anywhere, so would have to wait until we got on the train.
After a checkin like at the airport, we dropped our luggage to the luggage (train)car man who stored it somewhere and we settled on our seats in the new, modern and luxuriously train cars with overhead windows, that were specifically built by Kiwi Rail for the three scenic rail road journeys that New Zealand has to offer.
Our Train consisted of 5 of such cars, a cafe or restaurant car, an open viewing platform car and the aforementioned luggage car. All this was pulled up the mountains by two large Diesel Locomotives.
We had our four seats on the left hand side around a table in car E.
And perfect to the schedule we slowly rolled out of the small station at 8:15.
Our (and most likely all) seats had headphone jacks and with the supplied headphones we could listen to a commentary that was give about the places we passed. There also was a display with a map of our trip and the current position of our train. Pretty cool all in all.
The journey began with flat fields full of cows, crops and large water sprinklers that stretched for multiple kilometers across the fields.
Then after we had left the Canterbury plains we got into the the mountains and the train slowly wound it self up the curvy track, through tunnels and along deep ravines.
The landscape was stunning and we took turns in going to the viewing platform car, that was luckily directly attached in front of our Car E.
When at our table we listened to the mostly interesting information from our headsets.
After a good while we arrived at the highest point of our route: The Arthur Pass.
Here we could get out, stretch our legs and get a bit more fresh air.
The next 8 km were going to be through a tunnel that helped us to descent 300m of altitude in a straight line.
We then passed Lake Brunner nestled in some beautiful landscape and finally arrived in Greymouth with some delay at 13:15.
We got all our bags back and looked for the Motel but instead found an Irish Pub. "We only going to ask for the way" we reasoned our entry and it would have been rude not to order a beer.
So, 4 beers and a very long good chat with Dave from England later we exited the pub with directions to our Motel.
Dave was a great guy, a roadie for a couple of bands, he lived in NZ for a long while and helped kids get started and oriented in life.
He has been doing Kayak tours and was in the army and had plenty of stories to tell. He gave us some tips for the rest of our trip and sent us off to the Motel because he also had to leave to get to his Band practice.
We found the Motel quickly now and being exhausted from the trip or possibly even the beers we needed a good long rest of more than two hours before we could get up again and find some dinner (back in the same Pub) and go for a walk.
Greymouth was pretty quite after 9pm so I did have some time to catch up a little on the blog and read a bit in my book.
