So, here we are in Hanmer Springs which is the epitome of luxury- but more of that later. First, the last couple of days.......... We left Jilly and Brent in Te Anau with a farewell which we would only normally get from family who're currently pretty keen on us. They hugged us, gave us muffins for our journey,asked us to email them when we got back to the uk safely and waved us off down the road. Over breakfast, we'd had the full account of Brent's kidnap ordeal in Chad, Jilly's eldest daughter's midnight text about her promotion to air crew for the Saudi Royal family and Jilly and Brent's detailed house building plans for their new B&B, not to mention the full lowdown on Brent's dad who's currently dying with an untouched sense of humour, by the sounds of it. You know, I don't know that much detail about my own family's goings on - a one off experience........ or so we rashly thought. Spent the day driving from Te Anau to Fox Glacier on the west coast.So many photo stops that the doors began to spring open automatically every time we slowed down. We loved Queenstown- a vibrant ski ing resort. We stopped there to try putting photos on the blog- obv failed miserably- and had fish and chips in a fish and chip shop cafe, cooked to perfection by 2 wonderfully polite and friendly young men. The menu iNcluded oysters- hard to imagine ordering a saveloy, 2 portions of chips and a dozen oysters in Sheffield. Then onwards on the long drive north- about 6.5 hours in all. John drives and I map read, which to be honest is not much of a challenge even for me- 'drive for three hours, turn left, then drive for another 3 hours' . I intersperse this heavy load with falling asleep and playing the 'what if' game with John, who is now getting quite good at it after a rather shaky start. Yesterday's was 'what if you could only have 4 million people in Britain( population of NZ)- who would you choose?' Ah, the joy of chopping out politicians and the like. Eventually we arrived at Fox Glacier and made our way to the No 1 rated B&B in the town( well, village). We've been using Trip Advisor since Jonny introduced us to it and it's been great for finding well rated places and in our price range. Eventually we found Reflection Lodge( no reflection because it was dark and we had to drive through a helicopter airfield to get there). Raelene, our hostess greeted us at the door as if we'd just been away on a short break from 25 years intimate acquaintance with her, her family, her family's friends and her family's friends children, one of whom(cute little 16 month old Georgia) was sitting on Raelene's hip. During the time it took to make and drink a cup of tea, I heard all about Georgia ( full digestive history and blow by blow account of play group interaction), Georgia's mother( post natal depression, split from husband, part time job), Georgia's dad( deep sea fisherman away for 6 month stints, wants to build Georgia's mum a house, great dad), Raelene's son( works in Canada flying helicopters, home for 3 weeks, Georgia loves him). There were more but I didn't take notes so the details became a bit blurry. John stuck it out till the post natal depression then gave himself third degree burns by drinking scalding tea so he could escape to the manly task of unloading a car. To be quite frank,he stretched it out quite a lot. He could have unloaded a Tesco superstore in the time it took him to take 2 suitcases and a small rucksack into our room. We escaped by pleading starvation and headed for town to eat. Lovely little cafe, great salads and a wonderfully cheery waitress then back to Raelene, pleading exhaustion. Comfy bed and amazingly quiet. Next morning, eggs from Raelene's chickens and the story behindher daughter's marriage, a detailed account of her three grandchildren, women's problems, holidays from her youth, her errant husband in Indonesia, how to pickle onions and the sad story of a disabled child she knows. John was trapped by the need to eat toast so had to sit through the whole lot, looking gently aghast. However, she had a heart of gold, couldn't do enough for us and probably hadn't talked to anyone for a week. So, off again- another 6 hour drive. After a while, the scenery became less impressive, more rainforest and the photo ops were fewer. We did stop in Bruce's Bay- we stopped there in 2000, Viv and Jordie- vast empty beach in the middle of nowhere- hadn't changed at all. However, the Franz Josef Glacier was a real disappointment. It had shrunk, looked like a badly ravaged piste and was cordoned off so far back you couldn't see the end of it behind the rocks or hear the creaking. The walk there and back was lovely but I wouldn't bother again. Our first disappointment in the whole 3and a half weeks. Ok, more later - off to drinks with our hosts xxxxxxxxxxxxx