M-whY

At the supermarket, I ran into that cute Canadian chick again.

"Hey! It's you again!"

"Hello! Are you staying in town for the food festival too?"

Hokitika, in addition be being well known for it's numerous jade craftsmen and shops, held an annual food festival every year, attracting thousands of visitors to the otherwise quiet, seaside town. Only a few days before the annual event, the town was already buzzing in anticipation. Rooms in the area were booked out well in advance.

"Unfortunately not. We're headed down to the glaciers today. We're kind of on a tight schedule," I explained. The car needed to be returned to Christchurch in a week, and we still had a few places to go.

"Oh ok! Well have fun!"

The original plan for the day was to drive down to the glaciers, stopping to do a couple short walks along the way. The weather refused to cooperate though. Rain started to fall heavily. So much for those walks.

A few kilometers out of Hokitika, I realized we had forgotten to fill up. No matter. We'll just fill up at the next town.

As we drove through Pukekura, we kept our eyes peeled for gas stations.

"Did you see any?"

"Nope. Maybe the next town." Our gas gauge indicated we were running really low on gas.

A while later, a sign indicated we were entering the town of Harihari. We passed a house on our right, and an arts and crafts shop on our left.

That's it?! That was the whole town? I got the feeling if I built a house on the side of the road, I'd get a town all to myself. Just imagine. Welcome to Markville. Population, me.

Back in the U.S., I got a thrill out of driving until the fuel indicator light came on, then seeing how much farther I dared go. I was never worried, gas stations were everywhere and easy to find. Here in New Zealand, it was different. I had no desire to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Especially in the pouring rain.

While it probably would've made for an interesting story if we had run out of gas, we were able to fill up at the next town we passed through. It turned out that both glaciers were equipped with car feeding troughs, and we probably could've made it there with what we had anyways.

As I mentioned before, Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers are among the New Zealand's most visited attractions. In the past, there had not been many differences between the two. Each was impressive in their own ways. In recent years, however, tourism at the Franz Joseph has really taken off. Numerous B&Bs and backpacker hostels have been built to accomodate the influx of tourists, making accomodation easier to find, but it's popularity had made glacier hikes significantly more costly. For this reason, we decided to sign up for a Fox glacier tour.

We arrived at Franz Joseph first and stopped to make room reservations for Fox. After trying several times and getting a busy signals, we decided to just go there and check in person. It was only a 25km down the road. But 25km in rainy conditions on what turned out to be a slow, winding road took nearly half an hour to cover. Luck didn't seem to be with us today. We got to Fox only to find every single hostel full. No choice but to drive half an hour back and spend the night at Franz Joseph.

We were playing cards with a couple Swedish girls when the TV started reporting about a tornado that went through Greymouth earlier in the morning. Wow... we were just in Greymouth yesterday! The tornado had come without warning from the sea, and gone straight through the town center, wiping out a couple buildings before disappearing over the mountains. I guess it was a good thing Greymouth didn't have much to begin with (though it probably has even less now...) or otherwise we might've spend an extra day there!

Around dinner time, the weather started to clear. The rain stopped, and the clouds began to disperse. Enough to catch a glimpse of the glaciers.

I really hope the weather is good tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to walking on the ice!

Thanks to everyone for their support and comments! Knowing people are reading keeps me motivated to continue the updates!