Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Honeymoon – Ali loves the helicopter over the glaciers









Up at 6am to go on the Okarito boat tour, thanks to EA colleagues and John and Vicky Phippen. Today I covered myself in insect repellent and had every bit of me covered, I’ve had enough of allergies now. We saw the kotuku heron, thousands of black swans, tern, shags, oystercatchers and wood pigeons. But oh my it was freezing on a boat so early in the morning. We had the heating on in the car full blast after. 

Onto Franz Josef, to attempt a helicopter flight…third time lucky. And we were definitely lucky, the cloud lifted and off we went to the skies to see the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. It was fantastic, I loved it. Ali hasn’t been on a helicopter before, but was beaming…apart from the turbulence. I had the biggest smile on my face throughout the entire trip. We landed between the two and stood in the snow/ ice for photo’s. It was surprisingly warm and bright on top of the mountains. I didn’t want the 30 minute trip to end, such an adrenalin rush. 

How do you follow a helicopter flight? Driving, driving and more driving to get up to Greymouth for our train journey tomorrow. On route we stopped to look at the pancake rocks and blowholes, but apart from that it was drive, drive, drive and ‘new balls please’ aka ‘change driver’. We managed to cross the bridge at Harihari that was washed out due to flooding but for the whole journey to Reefton we saw landslides over the roads.

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