Campervan

23rd November 2009 This morning we picked up our campervan which is to be our home for the next two and a half weeks. To be brutally honest, we weren’t exactly enamoured of our little van when we first saw her, she was much smaller than we had envisaged and while she did have the advertised shower and toilet, the toilet is little more than a portaloo. I don’t really know what we expected, but this is it for the next little while. Also Ed can’t actually stand up straight in it which means I’ll be doing the cooking for the next couple of weeks, so from his point of view there is a bright side :). ...

26th November 2009 Glorious blue skies (although still cloudy over the mountains) at 7am this morning, so we were up and off, back to Franz Joseph for our walk to hopefully get some clear views of the glacier before the cloud cover came in. Not surprisingly, the glacier was even more spectacular with the blue sky backdrop than it was yesterday covered in grey cloud, so we set off. The walk started as an easy gravel path to Peter’s Pool, this is a kettle pool formed when a block of ice is left behind by a retreating glacier and the foliage grows around it. Not quite still enough to get a perfect reflection of the glacier and the mountains. We continued on through native rainforest before arriving at our first, long swing brige crossing the river floor. ...

24th November 2009 Our first night wasn’t a roaring success. We had parked the van on a slight incline without realising and spent most of the night with our feet slightly elevated making it a little uncomfortable. Also because we were undercover, we were much more sheltered than we would normally be, so found that we were quite warm in the night. However, at least today was sunny and we were planning to head south down the west coast and find somewhere a little more remote to stay the night. There are several Department of Conservation campsites which have toilet facilities but little else and are set in some wonderful locations. ...