After Barrytown

My next stop was the picturesque snow town of Franz Joseph, home of the fastest moving glacier in the world. It moves up to 6m a day! When we arrived, the freezing rain put me off any big hikes, but the next day was absolutley stunning - we took an amazing walk up the advancing glacier face, and into the crevaces and hummocks of the glacier. It was a tough but rewarding hike, getting stuck in slim places, loosing footing, climbing up and down ice faces - we really had a fantastic time.

And we were rewarded with another hailing, freezing rain of a day the next morning. The weather was so bad we just ended up watching movies and playing cards with eveyone in the hostel. We skipped the stop at the Fox Glacier and headed out to the beautiful ski town of Lake Wanaka. Here, we were finally greated with blue sky and great opportunities to walk through the bush.

While in Wanaka we checked out the legendary Paradiso theater - a theater where there are no movie seats, just lots and lots of living room couches, some airplane seats and an old yellow beetle to serve as chairs. The Kiwi's know how to make a movie theater, we took our beers and settled in for a cute kiwi film, "50 ways of saying fabulous" - if you get a chance to see it in Canada (it was at the recent Toronto Film festival) I recommend it highly! At intermission we grabbed freshly baked cookies - it was such a civilized movie night - like being at a huge living room.