Day 3 - Canterbury

Today we spent the day in Dover.  First we visited the Western Heights, then spent the rest of the day at Dover Castle.  Cold, rainy and windy.  Normal English weather.  It didn't prevent us from doing anything, however.  Did a couple of guided tours of Operation Dynamo and the Underground Hospital.  Pics from the first two days are here.

Day 2 - Canterbury

Arrived at 10 A.M. on almost no sleep.  Got an upgrade on our rental car and a bonus rate reduction.  Good start to the trip.  Wandered around the town of Canterbury and spent most of the time at the Canterbury Cathedral.  Interesting cathedral and quite massive.  The place we're staying is quite nice and well equipped.  Weather was cool but not wet.  We all packed it in early due to tiredness.

Day 1 - On our way to Merry Old England

We're leaving tonight for 30 days in England.  Stops will be in Canterbury, Bournemouth, Bath, Bourton-on-the-Water, Parkgate and London.  4 days in each of the first 5 stops and 10 days in London.  Should be fun, although it looks like we'll miss the beginning of good weather in Toronto.  Keep you posted.

Day 28

Drove from Mount Cook to Christchurch.  Rain all day.  Final photos posted here.  Back to Auckland tomorrow and home the following day.

Day 27

Good day today.  Excellent weather.  In the morning did a boat tour to the Mount Tasman glacier.  In the afternoon, the much cancelled Tasman Glacier heli-hike finally happened.  And it was worth it.  Perhaps some star gazing tonight.

Sorry about the lack of photos.  Most wifi isn't fast enough to upload photos and I'm saving the little data I have left on my phone card for other stuff.

I've uploaded a few today.  All photos are here.

Coincidence, fate or .......

Since our heli-hike was cancelled yesterday, we went on a 3.5 hike to a glacial lake.

As a preface, I need to mention a lovely couple from the Czech Republic that we met on our overnight boat trip to Doubtful Sound.  They were supposed to be on a different boat with a large group travelling together, but there wasn't enough space so they got bumped to our boat.  We sat together for meals and talked to them quite a bit.

Anyway, we're hiking yesterday and run smack into them again.  The series of events that allowed this to happen were extensive:

1. They had to be the one couple out of their whole group that got bumped.
2. They had to get bumped to our boat, out of a choice of a few.
3. We both had to end up on the opposite side of the country at the same time.
4. Our Franz Josef heli-hike had to be cancelled.
5. Our Mount Cook heli-hike had to be cancelled.
6. We both had to choose this particular trail, out of about 8 choices.
7. We had to be on that trail in the same timeframe.

Coincidence or fate or .....

Day 26

Drove up to Mount Cook today.  Nice weather most of the way, pretty warm.  Uneventful drive except for a stop at the Elephant Rocks.

The scenery in and around Mount Cook is beautiful.  Mountains, valleys, rivers, glaciers.  There is no town, although they call it a village.  A few places to stay and a couple of places to eat.  As you can imagine, the places to eat are priced accordingly.  The buffet dinner at the Hermitage, which is the biggest place to stay in Mount Cook, the buffet dinner - I repeat - buffet dinner is $63.  You get the idea.  We found a place which wasn't cheap, but was more reasonable.

Today, which had very nice weather for most of the day in the village, we were scheduled to do our previously cancelled heli-hike from Franz Josef.  We had rebooked it for Mount Cook.  You guessed it - cancelled again.  Bad weather up on the glacier apparently.  So we have rebooked again for tomorrow.  This is our last chance.

Tonight we were to go stargazing, but to no one's surprise, it also was cancelled.  Cloudy and raining.  Tomorrow is fully booked, so that's out as we are gone off to Christchurch after tomorrow.  Maybe we can venture out and see something on our own.