Day 34

Harihari to Franz Joseph Glacier 76km

Another fairly long day today, but under overcast skies throughout the day. A nice change from the blazing sun that has accompanied me each day on the normally rainy west coast. It was another nice day of tracking through the native rain forest occasionally passing through a river valley dedicated to dairy farming. I've seen very few sheep here in contrast to the east side of the island which is filled with the fuzzy little creatures.

There were a few hills along the route today one with the intimidating name of Hercules. But it turned out to be not too difficult. The look of the hills tomorrow between Franz Joseph and Fox look a lot more serious, nearly 1.3 km up straight up. But that is tomorrow. Today I'm here in the super touristy town of Franz Joseph. About every ten minutes or so a helicopter takes off to provide the occupants a very expensive view of the glacier. One can even rent, for $100, an electric bicycle that will carry one up to the foot of the glacier. I of course rode my 100 pound bike to take the obligatory picture.

The holiday park has the tents quite tightly packed in. So much so I briefly considered completing the 20km to Fox, but the hills between here and there seemed a bit much at this point in the day. I found it necessary to set up very close indeed to a German couple on a four month tour of NZ. This is after they've completing the journey from Hanoi to Bangkok and then a few thousand kilometers of Australia. Next they are off to cycle from Alaska to Toronto. I'm not sure at this point if I could actually pedal my bike for an entire year, but I'm up for a few more thousand km here in NZ for sure.