hello! i’m in franz josef, it is picturesque here, right next to the mountains and the ice rivers. there are about three houses and two shops or so. we stoped at a mining town on the way and we had the oppotunity of panning for gold. i declined, it was a bit stupid as they quite clearly poured gold dust into a pan put some rocks on top and you “gold pan” into a plastic bucket. very tacky i thought. went for a walk instead with a couple of swedish girls called jesica and helen and anglish guy called rob who i had met on the bus. they are prety cool, and i am doing some kyaking in about 20 minutes with them. tomorrow i’m doing the full day glacier walk taking about 8 hours or so. it should be fun. i’ll blog later on see you

julio

Mama and I are sitting in the attic, wondering how early we can go to bed.

Liv is now in France, skiing.

I hope you’re not too disappointed at the quality of the disposable camera pics … Hey, wasn’t one of those supposed to outlast NZ!

yo! hmm six fresh e-mails from tarn to read. curse this expencive e-mail place.

i’m in greymouth at the momant, not much tot do here, and i can’t be bothered to pay for an activity.the bus journy here was quite plessent. the bus was due in westport to pick me up at 12.45. of course i have a horror of missing buses/trains so i arrive an hour early. after a soul consuming wait the godrotting bus eventualy arrives at 1.30. the river leaps out, he seemed a jolly chap. he gestured at a clip bourd and rasped something at me. hell, i said to myself. this was just what i needed, a hyperactive bus driver with a speech defect. it turned out that i could just make a rough estimation of what he was saying from reading his lips. i’ll see you back here at 2.15, he stated. most plesent. to cool myself down i went and bourt the biggest icecream ever. fantastic! the journey itself was ok. we would stop every now and again to have a rest and at one point he dropped a few of us of at the start of a walk, and after an hours walking picked us up at the end. we lost some people on the walk so we had to drive around looking for them for ages. this made us so late that the driver decided we should visit the beach and watch the sunset. nice! it is funny how hard it is not to look directly at the sun when you look at a sunset. amidst flailing wildly at ravening sandflys, catching sight of the sun and screaming “my eyes! they burn!” and atempting to take photos of the sunset using my sunglasses as a rudamentory lens filter, i had a nifty time. we also stopped at punakaki the pancake rock place. a bit dull really. just a load of rocks and stuff. lost my toothbrush, or someone stole it. the foam bits on my shaving devices seem to have melted into slime, this mixed with soap dribling from my soap tube, has formed a viscouse ooze at the bottem of my toiletry bag. it coats everything. fowl. had to clean it out today. descoved that my toothbrush container smells revolting, running a finger inside i found it had a layer of foulness cakeing the inside. obvisly it is the perfect breeding ground for germs and fungi. nice one mama! ear cotten bud things are usefull by the way! right i’m going into town to develope my pictures.

Aha, well is it not written that “It is the early bird that catches the worm, but it is the second mouse that gets the cheese”? I think so.

Keep a look out for a whip to complete the indy look!

right, I’m off to val thorens. Will text updates.