Day 54 – Queenstown to Fox Glacier
Our drive from Queenstown to Fox Glacier was another cloudy and gray one. After we checked in, we drove the 20 minutes over to the view point of Fox Glacier. It was about as womp-womp as we expected.
Be it tiny, the town has a few places for lodging and a restaurant and a bar. We opted for the restaurant where I had nice red wine. Our server was from Wyoming, so we chatted a bit about stuff we had all seen. She even knew the RV Park we stayed at outside of Teton National Park.
Day 55 – Fox Glacier to Greymouth
After an interesting “included breakfast” at our motel, we popped over to the glacier again “on our way” out. And we are so glad we did. They have a replica of a Māori ocean vessel. The scale of the thing is impressive at about 100′ long. They also have a “sundial” looking view finder to help you find various points of interest in the area.
In the very tiny town of Ross, we stopped for a break. New Zealand has really nice public bathrooms in every town. It’s a quite nice thing to have while driving. And, it keeps businesses from needing to allow customers to use their’s. On our way to get drinks at the convenience store, we ran into an elderly resident. She had a wheel barrow with two gasoline cans to fill. She was the chattiest person ever. She wanted to know all about our trip and wanted to tell us of some great places to go in Greymouth (even though she hadn’t been there in a couple of decades. LOL!)
Once in Greymouth, we found a very cool brewery for lunch. I had the steak with roasted broccoli and potatoes, mashed butternut squash, and gravy. It was the prettiest and best brewery meal I’ve ever had. We then went out to the point to watch the surfers and try to spot dolphins (others saw them, but we never did). We met and chatted with a woman from France. She was very kind and lovely to talk to. We joked with her that I was born in Paris…and then explained. We found it cute that she didn’t know there was more than one.
For dinner, we went to Speights Ale House. I had had their lager in a couple of places. The brewery is a very nicely converted train station. My banana dessert had hokey pokey ice cream (it has tiny bits of honey comb in it) and was probably the prettiest I’ve ever been served.
We enjoyed a pretty sunset. And then, once it was dark enough, we went to see the glow worms. They aren’t very photogenic, but he managed to get one shot of them.
Day 56 – Tranzalpine Railway: Greymouth to Christchurch
We had some time to kill before boarding the train, so we saw a couple of small sites. We then turned in our rental car and waited at the same brewery across the street from the train station. Closer to boarding time, we popped into the gift shop for a tshirt and sticker.
The train was a lot of fun. Every couple/throuple got a 4-top so we had room to spread out. The views were great. We had heard it was one of the prettiest train rides in the world but now we are pretty sure there is a caveat of “if you travel in snow” to that. Still, it was fun and we enjoyed it.
We were greeted with a cool towel, wine spritzers, and small puff pastry rolls with cheese. Later, we had more wine/pepsi and a charcuterie. Dinner was still more wine and a lamb roast with mashed potatoes.
The train went through 19 tunnels. Most of them were quite short, but one was over five miles long.
Upon arrival, we had the nicest Transfer driver ever. And then, at checkin, we were granted one of the two “penthouse” rooms. But that was a bit silly since it was just a normal room; it simply happened to be on their top floor with only one other room (that was clearly the bride’s room for the wedding being held at the hotel).
Day 57 – Christchurch II
Our breakfast was outstanding. We had the very best scrambled eggs and buttered mushrooms of the entire trip so far.
We might have eaten ourselves into a food coma or maybe it was the heat because we went right back to the room for naps. I have never slept this much on a trip. Or maybe at all in my whole life ever.
We enjoyed their botanical garden a lot. This is a tiny smattering of the “good” images I took.
We were hungry but our “strongly recommended” dinner reservation was a ways off, so we took a rideshare to a huge (and bustling!) food market and shared some potato nachos and a margarita from “El Rancho.” After we ate, we found conveyor belt sushi, which I’ve always wanted to do.
Our dinner was prime rib and wine for me and a greenstone scotch steak for him. It was all fabulous, and we had to turn down dessert.