Boxing Day

Hokitika is the Jade capital of New Zealand, and Amy and spent all morning browsing the shops and looking at jade and bone carvings. We hit the road again after lunch and continued on down the West coast until we came to Franz Joseph Township. We had booked a room at the Top 10 Holiday Park, so we found our room and then decided to make plans for the next day. There were two options that we were considering. I wanted to do the heli-hiking, which consisted of taking a helicopter up to the glacier and then hiking around on the ice for a couple of hours. Amy wanted to do the ice climbing-the much more strenuous of the two activites. This was one of the very few times during our trip that Amy and I disagreed on what we wanted to do. We compared the brochurs and discussed both options, however, neither of us was giving in to the other. Finally Amy played her trump card and said, "You have the choice of coming back here, I probably won't ever come back, so we should do what I want." How could I argue with that? So we made reservations for ice climbing.

At dusk we took a 20 minute walk to Lake Matheson, which is so still you can see the reflection of the mountains in the lake. It was a beautiful walk through the rain forest, however, I preferred to call it The Enchanted Forest. Moss covered trees lined the trail giving it a Lord of the Rings appearance. I expected the trees to start talking at any moment! We saw the lake just before it started raining, interupting the stillness and obscuring the reflections.

We didn't know what to expect with the Top 10 Holiday Park. It turned out to be a camping area, with cabins and single rooms available as well. Amy and I stayed in a single room with shared cooking and bathroom facilities. The kitchen was a huge room with several stoves, friges, sinks and tables in order to accomodate everyone. We cooked our meager dinner of canned soup and bread, however, we looked longingly at our neighbors who were making a gourmet salad, stirfly and grilled beef. Their dinner looked much more appetizing than ours! We played a game of guessing where all the other accents and languages were from. There were very few, if any Americans besides ourselves.