Rcthink

We left Franz Josef after a night of the hardest rain I’ve seen on my trip so far. I was desperately hoping that it would move off or abate by the time we got to Queenstown. I had a lot planned for the adrenaline capital of New Zealand and didn’t want it spoiled by too [...]

After the scenery of Franz Josef I was really excited to get to Queenstown. It was probably the most talked about of all the places in New Zealand and I was anxious to see what it was like. I was quite surprised with how small it was. I was expecting a much larger full size [...]

One of the items on my “must do” list for New Zealand was hiking on a glacier. We headed down to Franz Josef from Greymouth and arrived in time for a half day hike on the glacier. The cheaper option was a walk to the terminal face of the glacier and up the ice a [...]

Not being able to make it all the way from Nelson to Franz Josef in one day, the buses stop in Greymouth for the night. There isn’t much to do in Greymouth but wander around. Someone had mentioned it wasn’t a very pretty city and I can’t say that I was impressed with any of [...]

There are a number of national parks and excellent day and multi-day tramps in New Zealand. The many kilometers of tracks in Abel Tasman National Park are among the most beautiful and easiest to access. About 40 minutes out of Nelson on the top of the South Island of New Zealand, the park stretches some [...]

Where is that you might ask? I asked the same question when I saw it on the itinerary for the Magic bus that I’m taking around New Zealand. Well, Picton is a tiny town on the north end of the South Island that is one end of the interislander ferry route. The ferry takes about [...]