Day 12 - From Glacier to a night hike along the coast

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On Thursday morning we woke up in our room at the hostil in Franz Joseph national park. The rain had stopped and we were ready to meet Tim and Andrea at the trail head to hike to the base of the Glacier at 7am. After the Glacier hike we made some breakfast and did some food prepping for the day in the kitchen at the hostel and then hit the road. The view along our 6.5 hour drive to the northern most point of the southern island was beautiful. Just out of Franz Joseph Ashley spied a calf of her favorite breed of cow so we had to stop. To her surprise it was

a whole paddock of calfs and they all came up to say hello. Ashley adores cows, and to have that many babies around her was heaven. They weren't shy at all, licking her coat and hands and waiting turns for head scratches. We stopped to pet a horse hanging out next to a snack shop and took photos along the way as we started to hit wine country. We made it Kihkoura at the base of Abel Tasman National Park around sunset. By the time we set up our camping arrangements online, we were driving to the base of the trail head with about 90 minutes of light left. We took a couple wrong turns at the beginning of our hike to our campsite within the national park, so it was completely dark by the time we hit the head of the 1.7 km trail in. The moon was bright and the path was quite clear, and tho we had no hitches once underway, we were very glad to find our spot and set up camp.