Blackball & Franz Josef

Before the post I want to wish the love of my life happy birthday J I wish you could be here celebrating with me – love you!

Hello everyone!!! I have been MIA for past couple of days but I have strong internet here and so I want to share what I have been up to the past few days!

Thursday:

We left Abel Tasman and headed down the coast. We had tons of stops which was so nice because I like breaking up the long distance drives. We drove along the Buller river which is one of the longest rivers in NZ. We stopped in the Buller gorge, Kilkinney Point for a stretch.

Then we headed along the coast and stopped off at a seal colony in Taronga Bay! The point is called Cape Foul Wind. The seals are adorable!!!

Back onto the bus and after a couple hours we were driving along the water! It was such a beautiful sight – Lonely Planet rated the drive we took the “top 5 drives in the WORLD!” It was some of the most beautiful scenery yet J

We then headed to The Pancake Rocks! The place we stopped in was called Punakaiki Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. These rocks are super awesome – they look like a whole bunch of pancakes stacked up!

Finally our day ended with our stop for the evening – Blackball, NZ. Boy this place sucked. It is a town (or a few buildings) made up of miners. We stayed at a old historic hotel called the Hilton. It was very old and there was nothing to do in Blackball so all of us Stray passengers drank and drank some more. We played kings all.night.long. It was so fun getting to know all the passengers and just hanging out with friends. One of the rules in the game was that if you cussed you had to put your forehead on the table until someone else cussed – well the only two people who cuss is Brittany and I – we had our heads on the table for most of the evening!

Brittany cussing too much!

Friday:

Thank god we finally left Blackball. We had a few more stops today until we made it to Franz Josef …

We stopped in Hokitka which is a bigger town and the town is known for its Jade. After going to the grocery we headed to the jade factory to see the stuff – pretty awesome!! I bought a little necklace J

Next was Lake Mahinapua – this lake is supposed to be BEAUTIFUL but we got there right when it started raining. That didn’t stop us from having some fun though J

Then we finally got into FJ - pouring cats and dogs but again that did not stop us – we went to the Monsoon bar and had a great ole time!

View from my room - after the rain stopped!

Saturday (today!)

Woke up pretty early to rain (it finally cleared but later in the day) and walked around the town. Its only a few blocks but it’s a really neat place.

We went to the West Coast Wildlife Centre and saw some Kiwi’s!!! They are native to NZ and super awesome to see – they are nocturnal so it was dark but still pretty cool.