The West Coast of the South Island

On 3.01.2019 I took the ferry from Wellington to Picton again, after celebrating New Year's Eve with my friend and a few friends and my friend went back home.

My first stop was at Johanna's cousin's in Picton, where I could kindly park my car for three days while I was back on the North Island.

From Picton it was then off to Blenheim, where I spent a day and tried to get used to camping again.

From there I drove across the island to the Pancake Rocks. As the name suggests, they are rocks that can remind you of stacked pancakes.

The next stop was Hokitika, a small sweet town which can be very beautiful in good weather. There I met two girls whom I met in Taupo (on the North Island). And we traveled together towards the north to Cromwell. On the way we stopped, among other things, at the Franz Josef Glacier, which is about 11 kilometers long and is the longest glacier in New Zealand. At the Franz Josef Glacier as well as at the Fox Glacier, which is about 25 kilometers away from the Franz Josef Glacier, we hiked to the glacier tongue. This was very impressive for both and took about an hour. The Franz Josef Glacier was the first glacier I had ever seen and it was an experience, but at the same time it was very frightening, because the Franz Josef Glacier, for example, has lost about 800 meters in length since 2008.

What seems very frightening as a number becomes even worse when you are standing at a point where on the edge it says the glacier went up to this point in 2008 and today the glacier is still far away.

Both glaciers are worth a visit and especially the hike to the glacier tongues is worth it, as they are very different.

The next day we went to Lake Matheson, which offers a view of Mount Tasman and Mount Cook. In addition, the two mountains are reflected in the lake. If you are lucky with the weather and go there early in the morning, this reflection looks like a postcard.

Our last stop for now was Cromwell, a small town near Queenstown, where I will be working on a vineyard for the next three weeks with the other two girls.

Not only because a little extra money for my travel budget was very welcome, but also because I did not want to miss the experience of working on a vineyard, I decided to work together with the two girls.

Our work mainly consisted of preparing for the harvest, as it is still too early for the harvest itself. That is why we had to remove leaves, for example, so that the grapes get some sun but do not burn, or we had to remove the lower branches that grow out of the trunk so that all the energy goes into the upper branches and thus into the grapes.

The work itself was okay and the team, which came from all over the world, was very nice, the only thing that made the work very hard was the sun. Because in New Zealand it is summer now and the sun exposure is very high here, so it was always a challenge to work eight hours in the sun. But with enough sunscreen and good entertainment or an exciting audiobook, that was not a big problem either. And besides, from the vineyard you had a beautiful view of Cromwell.

Hiking to the Fox Glacier