Day 10: West Coast and Glacier Country
After a two hour nap yesterday we both still ended sleeping almost eight hours last night. Which means we didn’t hit the road quite as early as I would have liked. The drive along Lake Wanaka was very nice. The lakes we have seen are definitely not small as many of the lakes I have been to are. All of them take thirty minutes to an hour to drive one length. Access to the West Coast is limited by two roads separated by almost two hundred miles. We took the southern pass at the town of Haast and began heading north. Not a lot of people live in this part of the South Island, which means not a lot of towns. This will be important information to know later in the day. We found a beach access road right by Haast and got out to see the beach on this side of the island. It went on for miles in both directions with no people on it. This wasn’t too surprising as the wind was fierce and the water freezing. We took a look around and continued the drive. The scenery was beautiful as always and it definitely was much greener on this side of the mountains. It was a much more tropical area than the rolling hills and farmlands around Queenstown and Wanaka.
Our first stop was an hour walk to Monro Beach. This is a very nice trail through the forest. It was amazing how wet everything was. There was also green vegetation everywhere. This is obviously a very rainy area. We came out on a small beach area that is supposedly a refuge for penguins although we did not see any. There were some rock formations off the coast in either direction, the water was a light blue but quite rough. It would not be a bad spot to spend the afternoon relaxing away from people as no one else was there. There was also a very fun bridge at the beginning of the walk. It was extremely bouncy and could easily be swayed back and forth.
The drive continued along the coast with more windy roads. I thought I was going pretty fast, but a large motor van that was keeping up with my little Yaris disagreed. Some of the people like to go slow and enjoy the sights, others are more focused on quickly getting to the next destination. About fifty kilometers away from Fox Glacier I began to notice we were pretty low on fuel. As mentioned earlier, there are not a lot of places to fuel up along this route. After thirty minutes the gas light came on and there was still no sight of a town. Fifteen minutes of driving with the light on, and maybe a few prayers, we rolled into Fox Glacier and its one gas station. It took thirty-five liters to fill up the car…and I’m pretty sure that’s the size of the tank.
We were now in Glacier Country. The first one was Fox Glacier. The valley it is situated in is very large with imposing stone cliffs and multiple waterfalls. A rapidly moving river of gray mud flowed through the center. In many ways this place looked like some kind of rock quarry. The glacier itself was not exactly easy to see as most of it was covered in the gray dirt we saw all around us. We drove on to the Franz Josef Glacier about twenty kilometers down the road. This could be seen from the parking lot and was much more impressive. This is a good hour and a half walk there and back. The first part is through some woods. Then you are out in another massive valley with the glacier on the far end. This is also bordered by large hills and cliffs on either side. There are also many impressive waterfalls throughout. It is a beautiful place and there is so much to see in addition to the equally amazing glacier. Both of these are retreating at the present time so are much smaller than a few years ago. They were still quite the spectacle.
We are staying in Franz Josef town tonight at another hostel. It’s a small town with not a lot going besides tourist activities a few restaurants. The bed is comfy and after another day of a lot of walking it’s time for bed.
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