Got back from the West Coast last night and I have 157 pictures! Do not panic – I am not going to post them all!

I left on the Tranz Alpine train at 8am on Sunday morning. I took lots of photos from the train, but most of them didn’t turn out very well, since there was lots of glare from the windows and it was too cold outside to stand in the open viewing carriage for very long. The photos I took from inside pretty much all looked like this. FAIL.

After stopping in Arthur’s Pass for the little while, I got to Greymouth at 12:45. 

The scenery looked like this for most of the way – beautiful, but whizzing past way too quickly to take decent photos of!

I arrived in Franz Josef about 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, and met several of her friends that night when we played Cranium, which was fun.

Some of you who were reading my blog last time I visited Brooke might remember me posting a photo of her flatmate’s adorable little kitten. Flatmate has moved on, but Kitten is still there – only he’s not a kitten anymore. He’s now a cat!

On Monday morning we met a friend of Brooke’s a her family for breakfast, and then went to look in the kiwi center. I have decided that if it was legal, I would totally have a kiwi for a pet. They look so fluffy and cuddly. No photos of the kiwi center, because they weren’t allowed. For overseas readers who don’t know what a kiwi looks like…they look like this! Now see why I want a pet one!

Lindy (my poor unsuspecting friend from TColl ) and her friend Emma (who was visiting from the UK) arrived late on Monday afternoon, so Brooke and I went on a bit of a Secret Mission to try and work out where they were staying, so we could sneak up on them and surprise her.

This proved to be A LOT harder than we expected! I’d managed to get Lindy to tell me the approximate time they’d be arriving in Franz, but because she wasn’t supposed to know that I was there, I couldn’t very well ask her "Can you tell me where you’re staying and text me when you get there!" Franz is tiny, but it has A LOT of hotels and motels and hostels. This translated to a lot of places they could potentially be! Eventually I did resort to texting and asking which hotel they were staying at, and an hour and a half later, she finally replied! What a mission. I’m lucky Brooke is so patient!

Once we knew where they were, we went to the reception desk, where, luckily, the woman on duty told us which room they were in. Success! Off we went to stake it out!

Kind of a shame that Emma (who had never met me before, and who now thinks I’m completely mad!) opened the door instead of Lindy, because it meant we didn’t see her on the video very much, but it’s still one of the funniest things I’ve ever done! Completely worth it. Too funny that she’d been suspicious I was going to show up! I asked her why later, and she said she was suspicious because I’d talked A LOT about how I had a job tutoring ESOL that week. Apparently this was not a very good lie. She knows me far too well! Damnit.

That night we went to a pub quiz (and came second!) and on Tuesday afternoon we climbed up the glacier, but that needs a post to itself because this one’s long enough already!