The Glaciers

Lake Wanaka

We left Queenstown to drive the 5 hour trip to the Franz Joseph Glacier.  En route we stopped at Wanaka.  The scenery around the lake is beautiful and the town ( which fringes the lake directly behind the photo) had a laid back feel that I liked.  The route from here takes you past more awe inspiring mountain scenery through forest strewn mountains to Haast and then on through national parks to the glaciers. We encountered few cars in either direction on the way, four cars on the same side of the road constitutes a traffic jam in this part of the South Island!!  We got to the Fox Glacier and stopped to do the walk around Matheson Lake.  This is the picture on many NZ post cards.  The highest mountains in NZ are Mt Tasman (on the left) and Mt Cook (on the right) and they mirror in the lake on a good day.

Much needed green tea!

Lake Matheson

This is our attempt at the mirror effect. 

Saturday we woke to torrential rain.  BUT having decided we were going to do the glacier walks we did the glacier walks.  First up was Fox, we got wet!!  Glaciers are basically 20 metres of compacted snow which turns to blue ice and runs out at the bottom in a river as it melts.                                                                          

  

This is Fox.  Well the bottom of it.  An hour's walk to the base.  Glacial morain clearly visible for all you A level Geographers.

This is Franz Joseph with the run off cave clearly visible.

In between Glaciers we went to a cafe for lunch.  Had whitebait patties!!  Not what we know as whitebait but estuary small fish.  Quite good too.  I was determined that the weather wasn't going to beat us so we went for the second glacier walk. 1.5 hrs round trip to Franz Joseph.  

A drowned and bedraggled kiwi bird!!!!

The next day was equally as wet.  We had a 7 hour drive up the west coast to Mapua at the top of the South Island.  No traffic so this went well.  We stopped off at Panakaiki Rocks.  Amazingly strange formations.  The rocks are arranged like stacked pancakes.



Interesting fact about NZ.  All of the bridges are numbered!!