Crossing the Southern Alps

Our whole group boarded a train this morning in Christchurch.  The train, or, more correctly, the journey, is called the TranzAlpine, "renowned as one of the great train journeys of the world."  The route is through the Southern Alps that run nearly the entirely length of the South Island.  The views all around were of beautiful mountains and gorges.  Luckily, we were blessed by another sunny day. The track runs the width of the South Island, between Christchurch on the east and Greymouth on the west.  In the center is Arthur's Pass, and that's as far as we went by train.

Boarding the TranzAlpine

Views from the train window

The Southern Alps

Our bus was waiting for us there, to continue on to the west coast and south along the Tasman Sea, through towns with great Maori names--Otira, Kumara, Hokitika, and Whataroa.

We had a beautiful drive through the Southern Alps.

Our final destination today was a town called Franz Josef, which is famous for the glacier of the same name.  We caught a glimpse of it from a nature trail.  Eleven people in our group (but, not us) are going on a helicopter ride in the morning that will take them from this glacier to the nearby one called Fox Glacier.  Hopefully, the weather will be perfect, and they'll be able to see the ice close up.  Many of these people are from parts of the world where they see very little or no snow, so they're pretty excited.  This part of the west coast of the South Island is a rain forest, which gets lots and lots of rain every year, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.  It's pretty cool, by the way, to look out our hotel window and see fern trees and other tropical plants in the foreground, and a snow-capped mountain in the background.