Campervan Day 11

Unfortunately this morning we awoke to the sound of rain.  Sure enough, our half day fox trot guided glacier walk was canceled.  We could have tried to get on one of the afternoon walks but they were fully booked and on hold due to the weather.  Instead we went to Lake Matheson, as recommended by the woman working at reception of the holiday park.  It was just down the road and had a pretty walk around the lake with views of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman in the distance, reflecting into the water.  I’m sure it would have been stunning on a sunny day, but the clouds made it slightly less impressive.  It was still a nice walk though and instead fern coils, or the koru spiral, significant in Maori culture, became the focus of our picture-taking.  From there we drove to a spot that advertised one of the best views of the two high peaks with Fox Glacier coming down in between them.  Again, I could certainly see how the view would be even more impressive if there weren’t so many clouds!  However, it still was pretty cool to see the glacier in the distance. 

We decided to drive up to Franz Josef Glacier for our next walk.  In the rain, but with lots of other tourists, we walked our to the terminal face of the glacier.  Once we reached the edge of the forest, the rest of the walk was in the wide river bed and looked like it was so close.  The massiveness of the mountains and the glacier were deceiving and really it took about 30 min or more to get to the end of the trail which brought us to 150m from the glacier.  Had we been on a guided walk we would have actually gotten to stand on the glacier itself and learn a bit more about it I’m sure!  There were also some pretty amazing giant waterfalls coming down into the river which provided for some entertaining photos as well.  On our walk back to the carpark we passed one guided walk and in the group were 3 of the people we did the Nevis Arc with the day before, 5 hrs away in Queenstown!  The itinerary for traveling around down here must be pretty much the same with everyone!

We ate lunch/dinner at The Landing in the Franz Josef Glacier township and had some huge meals.  I had bbq ribs with spiced potato wedges with sour cream and they were delicious!  We also recognized the people sitting at the table next to us from our walk around Lake Matheson in the morning, about a 40 min drive south.  We continued our drive north up the coast and decided to stop for the night in Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks which looked pretty impressive even in cloudy darkness at 9:30.  We thought maybe we could just get away with camping in the carpark for the rocks, since another two cars were there, but at about 10:15pm someone drove up and said there was no camping, apparently there was a sign on the other side that we didn’t see.  So we had a bit more driving to do tonight and ended up at another pull-off on the side of the road where two other vans are parked, we’re assuming we are allowed to camp here!