Fox Glacier

After leaving Franz Josef Glacier, we hightailed it to Fox Glacier - another 40 minutes or so down the West Coast.  The weather was still fine and clear despite predictions of rain.  After walking to the face of the Franz Josef, my foot was killing me, but I really wanted to see the mirror lakes that night while Mt Cook was still showing.  We got to the tiny township of Fox as the light was fading, so made a beeline straight to Lake Matheson.  There we found that you had another 20 minute or so walk before you reached the lake, which would mean the light would have been bad (ie no mirror of mountain reflected), and my foot was so sore, I doubted I would even make it without collapsing in a heap!!

So we decided that if the rain held off, we would check it out first thing in the morning instead.

Instead, we took a couple of shots of Mt Cook from the road while the late sun was still casting a bit of light in the right spots...

Note that the grass was so lush and green.  This was amazing to see after all dried up grass in Marlborough at the same time of year.  I guess the West (Wet) Coast was  living up to its name!

This is real Lord of the Rings country!  

We camped in a top 10 park in 'cabins'.  These were exceptionally clean and tidy.  Shared separate mens/womens bathroom facilities which were also immaculate.  A huge kitchen where you could cook your own dinners also warm and clean.  and only $60 NZ per night.  I've never seen anything better and can't wait to head down there to stay again and explore the area some more.

Had a great nights sleep, and woke up to find the predicted rain had come.  It was simply pouring.  Mighty cold too after such great weather in the previous days.  The weather was so bad that hiking was out.  We had a choice to keep driving south and come up the country another way, but that was a lot of driving.  So we decided to take a quick look at the glacier in the rain, then turn around and drive up to Hanmer Springs and soak in the hot pools.  So after a nice breakfast, that's exactly what we did...

This is the road up to the Fox Glacier - I actually got out in the rain and took this as it was so beautiful.  Gorgeous Beech forest lining the roads all the way up.  I believe it's a rainforest!

That road just afforded us some glimpses of the glacier, so we turned back and went up the other side of the river to the Fox Glacier carpark.  The river was in flood...

The glacier shrouded...

Signs were up warning how dangerous it was...

And the sign read we weren't allowed to walk to the face because...

Fair enough, I didn't want to be hit by an active rockfall that releases large rocks!  The glacier was still beautiful though, even in the inclement weather.  I was hoping to see some Keas (mountain parrots) in the carpark, but there was not one.  Obviously they didn't like the weather much either!

As drove back down the glacier road, we came across this old historic bridge so decided to explore a little...

It spanned across the glacier river in flood...

Pretty impressive really...

Perfect site and setting for a mystery thriller movie!

Once over the bridge we entered a bush track - so we were now walking in pristine Beech forest.  In the rain.  And cold.

But it was so beautiful we didn't care.  The one thing that struck me though was there was absolutely NO bird life.  Nothing.  A forest totally devoid of sound, simply because introduced predators (rat, stoat)  have completely eradicated them.  Up at Lake Rotoiti near me, Department of Conservation have started a huge crackdown on these pests and already the forests up there are teeming with bird-life and native birdsong.  It's such a shame that they haven't done the same in this pristine piece of land.

We could have walked in this all day, but time was moving on, and if we wanted a nice soak in the hot pools that evening, then we needed to start heading back up the coast.

We only made one more photograph stop on the way up and that was to photograph this bridge.  A one way bridge, that is also shared with a train...

Only on the West Coast of New Zealand.  You gotta see it to believe it!

Franz Josef Glacier

After reluctantly leaving Hokitika, we hurried down to Franz Josef as we knew bad weather was coming.  We got there late afternoon when the light was beautiful, and the glacier was still clear.  Despite my bad foot, we decided to do the walk to the glacier face.

The start of the walk was through pretty native bush and some beech trees.

And babbling brooks...

 The halfway through we got our first glimpse of the glacier...

Interesting rock formation - must be very old...

Then it opened up to the river bed which we walk along to the glacier face.  The sky was still blue here...

But like any mountainous area - how quickly it can change...

 Getting closer...

We passed by cliffs with pretty waterfalls...

Next time I'll bring my tripod...

It was a warm day but I had no compulsion to stand under the falls due to how cold the water would be...

So pretty...

Weather closing in and by this time I was hoping we would get there in time...

Looking back to the way we came - nice blue sky at the coast which is only about 20km away!

I loved the blue ice...

Looks incredible....

Here's the face of the glacier with the river underneath...

More blue ice...

Towards the top....

The whole thing...

I could have stayed there for much longer...

Sadly leaving...

One last photo before we disappear back into the bush...

I should say that we also fossicked for ages here - the rocks were quite spectacular - mainly schist.   The river above was fairly cold but crystal clear water.  There were several huge 1 tonne rocks which would have looked fantastic on my garden too, but I couldn't persuade Steven to carry them for me!!!!

I'm definitely heading back!!!

Hokitika

I meant to keep writing about my South Island trip back in March, complete with photos, but you know how it is, you get busy, things happen, and before long it's August and not many days left before Christmas!!  Suddenly you realise that you have to keep plodding otherwise the photos start stacking up and just sit on your hard disk drive doing nothing!

Firstly - an update - remember the blog about the Pancake rocks here.  In that post, I shared that I had put in a photo for a competition and the photo is shown at the end of the post.  Well - I won the competition and gained $3000 to spend on a bartercard.  Quite hard to spend though as not many places take bartercard but I'm slowly getting through it!  Was very exciting to win!

The last post I wrote about our West Coast trip was of Shantytown, a 'live' museum of an old mining town and I showed the images of the steam train still running there.  After we left there we drove to Hokitika where we had lunch and explored some of the shops.

First stop was the glass blowing shop which made really nice giftware, and not as expensive as some other glassware around New Zealand!

They had people demonstrating as well, and you were allowed to take photographs. Something that a few other places will not allow.

The major industries of greenstone (pounamu), gold, coal, and forestry have all dwindled over the last century, but a growing ecotourism industry has grown up and the town is starting to show signs of recovery. It has become a major tourist stop on the West Coast's main highway route, with carving of greenstone an important local industry.

These following images are some of the beautifully carved greenstone made from the Greenstone from the local rivers. These are carved by a master carver and are pricey, but beautiful.

Beautiful bone carvings were also on display...

After lunch we popped down to the beach. A wild west coast beach with typical bad weather closing in!!

We fossicked for ages hoping to find a piece of Greenstone, but reluctantly went on our way as we were heading to the Glaciers and wanted to see them while it was still fine..

Hokitika is a township on the West Coast (Wet Coast), and has a population of 3000. On a clear day Mt Cook (Aoraki) can be seen from the main street. That was where we were heading.