Day 29 - Cold Feet and a Stretch Hummer

​Wanaka at least made it ever so slightly easier to leave this morning as the sun was hiding behind the clouds.


Thankfully, it had reappeared by our first stop of the day - a stop just for those feeling adventurous. I decided that I wanted some adventure, and braved the scramble across some rocks and through an icy stream (which was…. Refreshing….. for the feet!). It was well worth the cold feet for the waterfall in the chasm though. 


Just a few minutes down the road was the Fantail Waterfall that did not, in theory, require one to get cold and wet feet. It turned out that you could get much closer to the waterfall if you did get your feet wet though. So I did. And it was totally worth it again.


The hat trick of waterfalls was accomplished at Thunder Creek Falls. Kreig got us to sample some ‘bush food’ - I.e. edible plants founded nearby. The pepper plant definitely left me reaching for my water bottle. He did, however, make it up to us by also providing us with lots of New Zealand snacks to taste as well.


These snacks (Cassava vegetable crisps, plane sweets, cookies, Timtams (possibly borrowed from Australia!) etc) supplemented lunch very nicely. 

After lunch, we went to the beach to hunt for pounamu stones (a type of greenstone) and aroha. Pounamu is of particular significance to Māori people. As a group, we had a lot of success in our hunting. Olga was very good at spotting the purple-ish colour of aroha and helped me to get a stone. I think I failed in my pounamu, but I have a stone that could be, and I am to ask the lady who we are doing greenstone carving with tomorrow. 


From the beach, we drove the rest of the way to Franz Josef (enjoying some more snacks!), where we arrived in time to walk up to a viewing point for the glacier. It was a bit of an uphill walk, but probably no bad thing after all the snacks. It is also pretty cool (pun intended) to see a glacier. Hopefully I will get to go even closer tomorrow…


We checked into our hotel and were told by Kreig to meet him at reception for 6:30 for dinner. We did NOT expect to be picked up by a stretch hummer! It was epic! We happily fit all fourteen of us in the back and rode in style to the restaurant.


The restaurant itself was a lot of fun. The food was great and there was a pool table, darts board and other sources of fun too. Shall we just say that I did not win at either darts or pool!? I fear my darts is definitely a bit rusty from university days. 


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