Not many, if any

I was sitting on the bus this morning. Most my mornings start like this. I rush and pack my everything into my obscenely-full bags, throw everything on the bus, get a good seat away from the British girl that thinks it's hilarious to yell "I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!" every five seconds, and then I crank my iPod up to full-blast. I spend the next couple hours listening to great tunes and looking out the window at the riduclous perfection that seems to be the norm on the South Island.


Today our journey was from Franz Josef to Waineka. The drive started out overlooking the Tasmanian Sea. It was hard to tell the sky from the sea, but the sea was a little more turquoise. Green fern-covered cliffs stretched and dove into the ocean. Birds sang, I sighed, just another morning in paradise.



Then we stopped for coffee and I took a walk to a clear lake that perfectly reflected the snow-peaked mountains into it. The lake was like a mirror.



The diversity of New Zealand never fails to amaze me. I think as soons as it does, it will be time to head home. Yesterday I hiked the Franz Josef glacier. It's a glacier in the middle of a rainforest. (Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either...) Our guide told us that he went surfing that morning and later that afternoon he was leading our hike up a massive piece of prehistoric ice. I believe this is the only place in the world where that dichotomy is possible.



The hike was pretty hard-core. The terrain wasn't exactly paved. I was very happy that I got to wear my own hiking boots instead of the wet nasty ones they provided. I did have to borrow some crampons though. (Crampons are they spikes you attach to the bottom of your boots to keep you from slipping on the ice.) It's terribly juvenile of me, but I couldn't stop giggling to myself everytime someone would say crampons. Rhymes with...

Tomorrow I head for beautiful Queenstown. I'll be happy to get off this crazy-train for a while. It's good to go, but it's just as good to stop.