February 10 - Pukehura to Franz Josef - 87 km

I have to start off with one more picture from Pukehura (or "Puke" as we refer to it).  The hostel came with one feature we haven't seen anywhere else - a bug net.  Is this a positive thing?  We didn't seem to need it, but it was reassuring, I suppose.

Here's one of our first views of the Southern Alps.  Above the treeline terrain and glaciers.

We stopped at Harihari and Whataroa for coffee and snacks.  The towns were nicely placed 30 km apart, to give nice breaks.  This photo says it all - what else is there in life?

We pedaled to Franz Josef today.  It is a tourist town (trap?) beneath the Franz Josef glacier.  It is a nice little town but has the dubious honour of having the most expensive gasoline in NZ.  After checking in, I rode out the 5 km to the glacier for a look and a few photos.  The Franz Josef glacier is very fast moving in glacier terms as it can move 70 cm a day, I assume due to the steep slope it's on.  In this picture you can see all the humanity (read lemmings?) walking to and from the The whole purpose of this town seems to be the glacier - there were thousands walking, more overhead in planes and helicopters (so many that you could easily see that they had a specific traffic pattern in the sky).   Yours truly was one of those walkers so I guess I shouldn't comment too harshly.

A view of the top of the glacier.

This shot is of some of the waterfalls coming off the side of the glacier valley.

The last picture is of the cycle / walking path on the way to the glacier.  It is sort of incongruous to be on the way to a big hunk of ice and travelling through a tropical palm forest.

Bye for now, it's bedtime.  Tomorrow we continue south, unless we decide to take a day off.  The  weather is supposed to be closing in in the next few days so who knows what we'l end up doing.