Day 27 (Christchurch/Arthur's Pass/Franz Josef) - Saturday 15th October 2016

Today, we took the TranzAlpine train over to the west side of the south island. We saw river valleys and spectacular gorges, as well as snow-peaked mountains (the snow was specially ordered in last night for our viewing pleasure today). We disembarked at Arthur's Pass.

Had lunch at the beach in Hokitika (try not to be too jealous, favourite-niece-on-the-other-side-of-the-world, but it was a Subway 😁), and we had a brief visit at the greenstone factory there.

We're now in Franz Josef, and our hotel has been upgraded to a 5* one as the tour operators didn't like the wing we'd been booked into at our original hotel (#NotGonnaComplain 😁).