DAY 11 BLACKBALL-FRANZ JOSEPH GLACIER

Kiwi's suck at building straight roads, which is brilliant news for us. It was a foggy start to the day, but it soon burned off to a nice sunny day, if a little cool. You can tell we are getting further south.

Our brekky stop for the day was the world famous Monteith brewery. This little boutique brewhouse employs only 6 full time staff and several thousand Oompaloompa's and makes some excellent beers as well as a brilliant apple cider. We did the tour which included a tasting session at the end. The perfect brekky and in fact I may have just found my favorite NZ beer. Monteith Celtic Red....just fantastic. The premium lager was also very nice. In fact they were all great.

Heres one of the Oompaloompa's at work

Sam was missing work......

More ooompaloompah's

From there it was south to a place called shanty town,which I thought was a real shanty town, but turned out to be just another tourist trap, so we gave that a miss.

Came across another weird fence. This is where all the old postie bikes come to die.

We then got caught in a fierce cross wind..probably about 332klm/h I reckon. Just look at the tree, if you think I'm shitting ya.

The hunted also became the hunter with us stalking and tracking a colleague of Sgt Sheepshagger from up north. This is Cunstable Ewewhucker and I think he was out looking for a date. He pulled up soon after we passed this harem.

We pulled into the big sandfly to taste some of the local delicacies including whitebait which is immature river smelt fish (ininga) caught in the local rivers by the locals and fetches up to $150 per kilo. It is considered a real delicacy and the sammich (as Dan would say) tasted fantastic.

This poor bugger had no idea he is on tomorrows menu.

You can also have a possum pie if your so inclined. The letters of complaint hanging on the walls from the greenie set and the replies from Possum Pete are hilarious...totally politically incorrect...I loved it.

Then it was into Franz Joseph, where we are staying in a luxurious tree house, compete with grotto style glacier pool on the deck...very nice indeed. It was also here that I discovered a rivet pin in the back tyre, so have made a tempory repair. Hope it holds till Wanaka, which is the closest town, where we might get it fixed properly.

Weather permitting In the morning we are going on a Helicopter flight over the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers as well as MT Cook. All the flights were on wind hold this afternoon, so hopefully it will be a nice day tomorrow.