Small Town Ross

We left Hokitika and drove south on the west shore of the North Island. Our aim was Franz Josef glacier. But before we got there we stopped for a cup of coffee. It was small town Ross where we stopped.

We started looking for a coffee shop and saw this sign:

The sign said it was open so my friends hurried in and I was left behind taking photos:

That’s how it looked like from outside:

And from inside:

We met Mr. Flossie himself. He offered us some home made pie and we  got one piece each. His coffee was very good and we truly had fun and enjoyed his very  unusual place. If you ever go to New Zealand, visit Flossies coffee shop!

Then we looked around the town and got this photo taken:

We drove to Franz Josef Glacier next but didn’t even stop there. The sky was cloudy. We wanted to take a helicopter ride over the glacier so we decided to continue more south and see if we could do that at Fox Glacier. We booked the flight but were told to come back in two hours to see if the weather will get suitable for the flight.

We decided to go the Fox Glacier overlook point. The drive was up the mountain through the fantastic woods:

All we could see of the glacier was this:

The other step was to walk to the glacier overlook on the bottom of the mountain. Recently there were big storms that damaged the path and it didn’t look like an easy walk:

I realized it was not for me and found a spot from where I could see the glacier from the distance:

There were also pieces of ice in a flow coming down from the glacier:

When we came back to the flights office, we were told that the helicopter will not fly that day. We transferred our booking for one week forward, to the day when we were going to be at Mt. Cook.

It was getting late and we still had long way to drive to the place where we were going to spend the night. Still we stopped few times to enjoy the views:

Come back for more!