Day 28: Queenstown to Franz Josef

Sunday, Mar 4th

At 8 AM this morning Kevin, our driver and guide for the trip from Queenstown to Franz Josef, collected us from the hotel.

Kevin turned out to be a most entertaining driver offering side ventures from the pre-planned itinerary along the way. First off we departed downtown Queenstown and were offered a drive-by of Kevin’s B & B, The Ferry B & B, a house from the 1860’s built adjacent to the Shotover River that he and his wife run. Rightfully so, he was quite proud of the establishment and his other business ventures. He then drove us by a local golf course and on into Arrowtown, a historic and quaint gold mining town of New Zealand.

We headed east over the mountain pass then turned west and north, bound for the glaciers of Franz Josef via Wanaka and Haast. We stopped en-route many times for scenic views, brief walks and other points of interest. Kevin was an avid fly fisherman, and with pictures to prove it he boasted of recently winning a local tournament with a 5.8-pound “brownie”; that would be a Brown Trout, not the chocolate dessert treat. Since I immediately showed interest in his fishing he included a stop at a local salmon farm where we were able to see and feed the fish including some 10+ pound trout that just hung around outside the salmon ponds gobbling up the underthrown fish food.

Arriving in glacier country we stopped for a brief look at Fox Glacier then moved on to Franz Josef Glacier adjacent to the town where we would stay for the next two nights.

Our lodging in Franz Josef turned out to be cabins at the Franz Alpine Retreat some 5 KM outside of town. At first this seemed to be a problem, as the cabins had no dining, no shopping and no activities (other than watching the adjacent cow fields) thus necessitating travel back and forth to town for anything we wanted to do other than sit around and look at each other. It was quickly noticed that the cabins had hangers but no closets, no “Kleenex” type tissues and were inhabited by very large (but slow) flies; clearly we were looking for negatives and were prepared to call the travel agent for immediate remedial action however, being the stalwart people that we are, we overcame the obstacles one by one. It is notable that Greg became a housefly "Ace" within minutes of arrival, downing flies faster than they could reproduce. As for the transportation to and from town, as we have heard so many times in Australia and New Zealand, the lodging clerk said “no problem”, “we have a local van service that you can use”. With the “no problem” comment, our blood pressure declined by several points and we soon realized that we could relax and accept that the locals would effectively deal with our travel concerns. Around 6:30 PM we were ready for dinner; we were promptly met by Julie our local van driver for what proved to be one of the most entertaining 5 KM rides any of us will probably ever take. In any case our relationship with Julie will ultimately be one of the more memorable acquaintances of the trip.

We had dinner at The Alice May Restaurant (recommended by Kevin), a place noted for well-sized portions of good food and drink as well as stories of murderous intrigue. Following dinner, Julie picked us up right on time and by 9 PM we were back in our cabins for the night. Things were looking up, the cabins were actually pretty nice even if we couldn't hang up our clothes.