Yesterday may have well as been the most boring day we have had to date. We left Franz Joseph in one of their "big" rain storms. I say "big" because as we were leaving Franz Joseph it was (and had been) raining like crazy all night and morning; one of the drives mentioned we were going to get 500ml of rain?!?! I have no idea how much 500 ml of rain is, but I do know (only now I might add) that 600 ml is equal to 20 oz (learning through foreign Coca-Cola!!! genius!). Soooo if it rains the equivalent of a 20 oz bottle of coke in any one area I would refer to that as a monsoon...obviously im no kiwi ;)
Anyway... We stopped by another little glacier on our way south and as the others in the group took a walk to see the glacier I was enthralled by this little pond where the water looked like it was crystal clear with colors of blue and green highlighting the bottom...It was stunning and cryptic at the same time. Unfortunately the monsoon rain and fog made it basically impossible to take a picture...I posted up my best efforts. I also took a picture of the stray bus parked by the MASSIVE ravine carved by this glacier over the last 239823 billion years. Very cool.
We made our way south to Makarora, in the monsoon. Our bus driver was quite funny as he explained how beautiful the area was we were driving through if you could see further than 100 feet ahead of you. He even had the audacity to pull over at a rest stop and grab a postcard of the area to show us what we were missing, laughing the entire time of course.
Because it was so rainy and cruddy we didn’t do any extra stops and ate our lunch INSIDE the bus at a scenic outlook. This allowed us to reach our destination about 5 hours ahead of time, lucky us. We arrived at 2pm to our A-Frame shack in the middle of the woods. All 20 of us then spend the next 9 hours of our day doing cyclic combinations of sleeping, reading, and staring at each other. I think everyone on the bus mentioned at dinner that they had finished their books… Kinda funny now ;)
