Day 2 New Zealand

The sun comes up over the sea as we head back to the main house for breakfast.

The table is made from the Rimu tree (red pine) and is beautiful. It's about 12 feet long.

Our guides (Magnus - left, Dan - right) cleaning up breakfast.

While waiting on the guides to clean up breakfast we walked down to the estuary.

We left Okarita this morning at precisely 8:15. We were given our marching orders and everyone was surprisingly on time. We headed off to Franz Joseph Glacier but stopped on the way to do some caving at the Tartare Tunnel. This was another amazing experience. We put on our water shoes and headlamps and headed off into the dark cave tromping through ice cold water that was above our ankles. About midway through the cave we turned off the headlamps and the ceiling was covered in glow worms.

Headed into the cave.

Ankle deep in the frigid water.

Wow it's dark in here.

Glow worm.

No kidding.

After the cave it is on to the glacier which is constantly moving. The guides were telling us it had changed so much just over the summer that pictures taken today wouldn’t look at all like those taken last month. We hiked through the rainforest to Roberts Point for a fantastic view of the glacier.

The glacier melt creates some spectacular waterfalls.

After spending some time at the glacier we headed back into town for a picnic lunch then one more stop before moving on to our home for tonight – Haast Beach.

The stop was a hike around Matheson Lake (about an hour) then back on the bus to Haast.

Boardwalk back to the bus.

Haast Beach - our home for tonight. It started to rain as we got into town and then rained hard all night. We had a very nice dinner (venison pie - delicious) by the fire in the pub (the only game in town) followed by banoffee pie (banana / toffee). 

After 2 days of hiking and riding on the bus we are all getting acquainted. It's so interesting to meet people from all over and find out what they do and what brought us all together.