Today was Evelyn’s 26th birthday, but with all the illness going round the last week, there wasn’t much celebration. In fact, there was almost none, as Marc forgot what day it was!
Marc’s excuse was this:
“Having been in bed suffering until recently, and then the activities and planning draining what little energy Marc had, his memory didn’t serve him quite as well”
Luckily, Evelyn’s mum called to wish happy birthday at about 9am, whilst she was in the shower, then after about 5 minutes, Marc twigged why she had called (he over heard the word birthday in the conversation). How bad did Marc feel for not remembering ;((((( Though he’s still adamant he would have remembered as soon as he went to pack his backpack, as of course he had brought a pressie. It would have taken something really special to get him out of this mess though, and a new fancy swatch watch went some way to repairing the damage, but the missing card didn’t help matters!!
It’s here Ev has to mention that Marc luckily had bought her this pressie in Melbourne, with her birthday in mind, but also as a backup in case she had bought him too much – this was also wrapped in lovely Christmas paper! – lucky for Marc she was understanding.
The plans for today weren’t ideal for a birthday either – we were driving to Franz Joseph Glacier some 500kms away!! Before leaving, we popped into Queenstown for one last visit, to take a few more photos, and admire this amazing scenery for one last time. And of course Buckies (Starbucks)
“Having been in bed suffering until recently, and then the activities and planning draining what little energy Marc had, his memory didn’t serve him quite as well”
Luckily, Evelyn’s mum called to wish happy birthday at about 9am, whilst she was in the shower, then after about 5 minutes, Marc twigged why she had called (he over heard the word birthday in the conversation). How bad did Marc feel for not remembering ;((((( Though he’s still adamant he would have remembered as soon as he went to pack his backpack, as of course he had brought a pressie. It would have taken something really special to get him out of this mess though, and a new fancy swatch watch went some way to repairing the damage, but the missing card didn’t help matters!!
It’s here Ev has to mention that Marc luckily had bought her this pressie in Melbourne, with her birthday in mind, but also as a backup in case she had bought him too much – this was also wrapped in lovely Christmas paper! – lucky for Marc she was understanding.
The plans for today weren’t ideal for a birthday either – we were driving to Franz Joseph Glacier some 500kms away!! Before leaving, we popped into Queenstown for one last visit, to take a few more photos, and admire this amazing scenery for one last time. And of course Buckies (Starbucks)
We have promised ourselves that we’ll be back in a few years. You just fall in love with the scenery, people and atmosphere of his place, and it’s very hard to leave, especially as we’ve been ill, we’ve missed a lot of what the town offers…
Still, we picked up the hire car, and brought Dave the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as a 3-in-1 pressie, 1 as a thank you, 2 being sorry and hope you don’t get our dreaded flu, and 3 so that he spot all the movie locations that he showed us ;)
We made a couple of stops en route. Our first was at the top of the mountains or hills, depending on which way you look at them; here we had amazing lookouts and views over the mountains, lakes and fields. Pretty spectacular stuff!
We then stopped for lunch at Wanaka, which is a town like Queenstown on a lake, with the mountains in the backdrop. This place is a bit more family orientated as it has a beach on the lake. It’s a really nice place, and deserves a longer stay than a lunch break – we stopped at a café, planned our trip, and watched the world go by. When we come back to NZ and QT, we will also come here for a few days.
Whilst at the tourist office, and with time getting on, we booked our excursion for tomorrow – the full day glacier climb at Franz Joseph. We do hope that we are sufficiently recovered from flu to fully enjoy the 8hr trip…
Marc booked the nights accommodation at The Rainforsest Lodge, which was advertised as having tree houses & a spa, this sounded a nice place to stay. However, they had none left so Marc instead booked a normal room. On reflection, Marc should have shopped around a bit, as this turned out to be a bit of a shoddy backpackers place, in characterless blocks of double rooms. Not really what we were after on Evelyn’s birthday.
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. We just drove, and drove, and drove. There was the customary almost-running-out-of-petrol due to infrequent and closed gas stations ;)
When we arrived at the Fox Glacier village we took the detour for the reflective lakes at Lake Matherson. After about 10 minutes of walking we decided that it would be best to come back tomorrow so we continued the windy and hilly journey on to the Franz Josef Glacier village.
We didn’t arrive until 9ish, which of course meant that most of the eateries in town were closed (by town we mean one street consisting of tourist office, supermarket, garage, 2 pubs and 2 restuarants), so we were left with the sports bar, which had a pretty limited bar snack menu at this time and of course the Cricket was on in the background… how romantic ;(
As we had to provide our own food for the hike, we headed on back to the room and made up some snacks and then got a fairly early night.
Marc is very sorry for such an unglamorous birthday, especially after what Evelyn did for his 30th. He will make up for it at some point, and next year will have to be something double special ;)
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