Day 17 - Monday 29th September

It was another early start to the day - bags outside the door at 6:30am, breakfast at 6:30am and departure at 7:30am. According to the weather sites, it was zero degrees outside.

Today we would be travelling from Christchurch to Franz Josef Glacier. The first part of the trip would be by train and then we would travel the remainder of the journey on our bus.

The bus took us to the railway station. It was a modern railway station and a modern KiwiRail train was waiting there for us. Karen organised the tickets and showed us onto one of the carriages.

Our tour group had the carriage all to ourselves and so we able to spread out and make ourselves comfortable. The train departed on time at 8:15am.

It was a beautiful sunny day and were able to enjoy the scenery along the way with snow-capped mountains in the distance.

The reflections in the windows made it hard for photos. The solution was to go to the observation carriage which was a separate carriage with no seats and no windows.

It was cold and windy taking photos from the observation carriage but it was worth it to get better photos.

We stopped and got out at Springfield station to enable us to take photos. Unfortunately I got back in the wrong carriage. This caused problems because the train was in two parts with a locked section between the two. A member of the train staff had to escort me through the locked area back to the correct carriage.

Throughout the trip, there were plenty of opportunities to take more photos of the scenery as we passed by snow-capped mountains, rivers and blue waters, bridges and tunnels.

We got off the train at Arthur's Pass station at 10:35am. Malcolm was waiting there with the bus. Arthur's Pass is a low point in the mountain range that allows you to avoid having to travel all the way around the mountain range to get to the other side.

The bus took us on the windy road down to coast. In front of us was the Tasman Sea. Soon after, we saw our first glimpse of Mt Cook. It was a fine sunny day and Malcolm, the coach driver, said it was the best view of Mt Cook he could remember.

We stopped for lunch at Hokitika. Before lunch, we went to the jade factory where we listened to a talk about mining jade and creating jewelry and other goods with jade. We had lunch at Cafe 39. After lunch, I went for a short walk to get some much needed exercise.

We reached Franz Josef at about 3:30pm. Our itinerary had shown a particular hotel but Karen announced that we had been upgraded to the Te Waonui Forest Retreat. This hotel is on the outskirts of this small town and is built within a bushland setting. Apart from hotel staff, a Maori warrior greeted us at the hotel entrance.

We had a nice room with two double beds.

Several companies offer helicopter rides at Franz Josef. I'd booked to do a 40 minute helicopter ride that covered both the Franz Josef glacier and the Fox glacier. It would go close to various mountains including Mt Cook. Suzy had decided not to go because of the cost.

Our group went to the booking office at about 4pm.  They told us we weren't allowed to take any bags onto the helicopter - just a camera - and so we left other things in a big plastic tub in the office.

After we listened to the safety information, someone escorted us across the road and into the helicopter take-off area.

There were five of us assigned to a particular helicopter - two couples plus me. Being the odd one out, I got to sit in the front seat next to the pilot - an ideal position to take photos. As you meet suspect, I took heaps of photos.

We landed on one of the glaciers for about 10 minutes - another great photo opportunity, The pilot also took photos of each of us with the helicopter in the background.

It was hard work walking on the glacier because your feet would sink into the snow about 30cm with almost every step.

The return trip to the base was complicated by cloud that had rolled in. When we approached the first cloud-filled valley, the pilot explained that his helicopter was not equipped with suitable instrumentation to fly through cloud and that, if we tried, we would probably become disoriented and crash.

When we got to the next valley, it too was covered in cloud. Luckily the third valley has OK and we managed to land safely.

Before dinner, we had drinks with Peter and Yolanda. Dinner was on the level 1 restaurant at 6:45pm. It consisted of a three-course meal off a menu.

The service was excellent. Many of the staff seemed to be trainees from overseas including Japan and Brasil.

It had been a long tiring day but we'd had great experiences - especially train and helicopter. We'd been lucky with the weather.