The Downtown Farmhouse

Saturday afternoon we headed to the Christchurch airport where we boarded our plane for Fiji. The flight was around 4 hours. Fiji Air is outstanding. If you are ever flying this way we strongly recommend this airline.

We arrived in Fiji around 7pm. We were greeted with  lei’s and a lot of BULA’s!!! The Fiji people are very friendly. While here we do not have a lot of plans. New Zealand was go. go. and more go. Here we are going to lay by the pool, walk the beach and enjoy this beautiful place.

We will be here in Fiji until Tuesday evening. We fly out to LA and return to the good ole USA on Tuesday. Yes we leave here and return earlier than we left. HA!

This trip was not our first adventure and it won’t be the last. Here is to the next 30 years my love.

We left Franz Josef on a very rainy Friday morning. We had to drive approximately 2 hours to Greymouth to catch the TranzAlpine train to Christchurch. On our drive we witnessed very hard working cattle dogs. They are so smart. As we watched them push the cows across the road in the blinding rain they were diligent in their efforts. As the cows finished crossing, we started edging the car to go. OH NO WE WERE NOT. The dogs both circled the car until the cowboy gave the shout that they could leave. It was really cool to watch.

We boarded the train for the 4 hour train ride. We drove through mountains and the Canterbury plains. The sites were beautiful and the train was a fun way to travel from the west coast to the east coast. We are starting to look a little rough from our travels I think 🙂

Next stop Christchurch……..

Wow!!! What a place.  Franz Josef is a teeny tiny little tourist town with one main street. We stayed at a cute little motel about a 5 minute walk from the main street. We drove the 10 minute drive to the car park area and then walked the 40 minute walk to the glacier. It is just an unbelievable site to see. When we finished walking this day, the fitbit said 15,000 steps. Worth every step.

Here is the beginning of the walk to the glacier

the walk to the glacier involved many different terrains

I felt the waterfall

We arrived in Queenstown on Friday afternoon. A shuttle picked us up at the train terminal and took us to our hotel. We walked through town and found some dinner and headed back to our room. Our flight on Saturday was early afternoon and the shuttle was picking us to take us to the airport at 12:00 so we got up early and walked into City Center. There was an earthquake in Queenstown in 2011 that devastated the city. Beautiful old homes and buildings. all boarded up due to damage.  I asked Steve if I could bring the windows on the front of the building on the right home with me. He didn’t respond.

We walked to the September 11th Firefighters Tribute while downtown.

The Christchurch Cathedral was severely damaged in the earthquake. They constructed a temporary cathedral just a short walk down the street called the “Cardboard cathedral”

Once upon a time there was a boy and girl vacationing or “on holiday” as they say in New Zealand. They had a great couple of days in Queenstown and left early on Wednesday morning to drive to Franz Josef. Google maps says it’s about a 4 hour drive. Whoever wrote Google maps did not pay attention to the forest and winding roads and mountains and oceans that are necessary to cross. Also, the Google maps person did not include a very important turn to be made in Wanaka on Route 6 to get you onto the road to Franz Josef.

The boy and girl did however pack leftover pizza from the night before to snack on while driving. They also found a very beautiful lake to sit beside while they ate their pizza, not knowing that this beautiful lake was an hour out of their way to Franz Josef.

The drive to Franz Josef was absolutely breathtaking. There were forests, oceans, lakes, winding and I MEAN WINDING roads. Oh my stomach.

There are lots of bicyclists here is New Zealand. Many are traveling on their bicycles. I took the picture of the bicyclist mainly because this road was going up hill for a very long time. We both thought of Mark Cummins and his love for bike riding.

Most bridges (90%) are one way bridges. They have signs prior to entering that say Give Way.

Seven and a half hours later we made it to Franz Josef. This girl is sick with a head cold but I’m not letting it slow me down.