Spring

New Zealand is quite special; after Fall comes Spring. It’s great. Spring had a theme for Eefje and me: have a lot of ‘first time ever’. We saw penguins in the wild, we saw and heard avalanches, both snow and rock (quite scary), we’ve been in natural hot pools, we saw a massive glacier, well 2 actually, and Eefje was drunk for the first time ever (oeps sorry Eefje).

Anyhow, we did our third walk in beautiful spring weather; a three day hike to the hot pools of the Welcome Flat. Great hike and especially the reward of the natural hot pools were fantastic: you could jump in the nice hot water to refresh yourself after a sweaty day. Great! Eefje also tested my reflex skills several times: she almost fainted halfway the track on the middle of a pretty rocky area. Luckily I was walking behind her so I could grab her backpack and push her towards the side. Another time I was walking a bit further up the track when I realised Eefje was not there anymore. She got stuck on a landslide, meaning whenever she moved, all the rocks and stones around her moved as well: naturally going down. Eventually she got out by moving very slowly and holding on to me as soon as she could. Pure survival skills and a good story to tell later on…
After some nice walks along the West Coast, we did a really cool walk (Alex Knob track) near Franz Joseph Glacier. But unpredictable as spring can be, we had rainy weather and no views whatsoever. Except excellent views of New Zealand’s best clouds…but if you’re freezing, wet and cold, you just want to get down the mountain as soon as possible anyway…to have that well deserved coffee and hot chocolate for Eefje (even though Eefje doesn’t share my love for coffee she was quite considered for my addiction!)