With our Hippie Camper Van we took the boat back to the South Island to go sea kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park. We got a good kayak and instructions from Abel Tasman Kayaks and started our trip next to the coastline, passing by islands, white beaches, rain-forest, strange birds and rough rock formations. We slept on a beach as you now them from untouched island in movies. The next day we had some good size waves coming up and we almost capsized when we had to paddle to the beach.
We continued our trip to the North West Coast and went three days hiking through the beautiful rain-forest. For the first time we had many hours of sunshine on the West Coast. We crossed rivers through big gorge. I love the intense colors and vegetation that change everywhere in New Zealand.
Our next mission was ice climbing in the Fox glacier. We visited a friend, a local guide, who took us into the Fox Glacier and into the Frans Joseph Glacier. We foud amazing moulins (holes through the ice) in both glaciers. Even our local friend had not ever seen this long moulins. One was high, really narrow and had difficult ice climbing. Iris, a friend of us, almost lost her consciousness because of cold hands and the idea to get stacked in the ice cave. It was narrow and hard ice climbing through a little waterfall. The other moulin into the Frans Joseph glacier was through a little river, over 200 meters long with lots site holes. Not narrow but often very low but then again huge and open. The first exits we found were too narrow to climb trough, but finally we found an exit.
Before we went back to Christchurch we got a heli flight to fligh over the highest mountains from New Zealand and land on the top of the Fox glacier. It was one of the rear blue sky days on the west coast.

Next week I will post some more good pictures.