Days 5-6
Fun Fact: New Zealand has 3,155 glaciers. 18 of them are in the North Island with the remaining in the South Island. Franz Josef is the 5th largest in New Zealand with the steepest commercial climbing available.
After our incredible adventure in Kaikoura, and our long drive to Greymouth for the night, our next stop was to head south 235 kilometres to the township of Franz Josef, known for the breathtaking views of Franz Josef and Fox Glacier at Westland National Park.
The afternoon was a relaxing one catching up on emails and doing some laundry. We did take a short hour hike in the small town just north of Franz Josef called Okarito. The town is known to have a specific species of Kiwi that are only found there, but unfortunately, we didn’t see any on our hike. After climbing up the side of a really tall hill (it felt like a mountain, especially since we were expecting a pleasant stroll through the forest) we came upon an opening that looked out over the town of Okarito and the largest wetlands in all of New Zealand.
The next morning, we woke up for our 9:15 am full day glacier hike on Franz Josef Glacier. One really can’t put into words how large this thing really is. Just to give you an example, notice the picture below of the group of people walking on the glacier. It is not only enormous, but really hard to capture the beauty and magnitude of its size.
We spent 8 hours total hiking and 6 hours on the ice. It was about a 10km hike up rugged terrain and over ice, but with our crampons over our hiking boots, it made it quite easy to manoeuvre over the ice.
By the end of our cold and tiresome day, we had agreed that once again we had a once of a lifetime experience on our incredible journey through New Zealand.
Tomorrow’s agenda will be driving south 180kms to Lake Wanaka to see what it has it store for us!
2 comments:
Magnificent!
This looks amazing!
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