Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers and the trip over Haast Pass to Wanaka22222

Friday the 14^th of November: So we slept very well in the peaceful and quiet Glacier Motor Home Park in Franz Josef. It is a cool grey morning, and the clouds are back, which I think makes New Zealand more interesting – that mysterious quality. We had a very slow breakfast at a restaurant that had very slow service. Over breakfast, the Breakfast show on NZ TV was on and the same news anchor who had visited Wasilla and knocked on Sarah Palin neighbor’s door, mentioned that he would have loved to hear the awkward silence at the Obama and Bush meeting at the White House. And in the bathroom at the restaurant, there was a condom vending machine that someone had written “insert baby for refund” on it. Ah NZ humour. (This AM at the very helpful Info Site – an actual building with actual people, not a web site – in Wanaka, the lady mentioned with a totally straight face that perhaps I should just swim in the lake when I said that a 50 degree pool was a little cold for swimming. That same dry, satirical humour.)

I emailed back and forth with Lynn about my return travel plans (we are only four hours behind CB time, the day before), and then we head up to the Franz Joseph Glacier. After a short walk we come to the viewing area at the glacier. You cannot get too close to it, and it is receding as one might expect (global warming and all), but there is an excellent view. I don’t know if I have ever seen a real glacier, as the last one disappeared from Colorado some time ago. It is a gorgeous sight and you will see the pictures. What I find interesting is that the glacier is not so much white, as one might expect, but rather it is blue. I have heard that about glacier’s from other people (Ivan for one), but there is something about seeing it with your own eyes. One can walk on to the Glacier, but that would have taken quite a bit of time. When I return, walking on Franz Josef will definitely be on the agenda.

The other thing I have noticed about NZ, is that we have not run into many American tourists, but there are tons of Germans (with some Swiss thrown in perhaps) and Japanese tourists. You cant go anywhere here without running into tons of Germans and Japanese.

So we leave Franz Josef and head towards Fox Glacier a bit further down the road. The road is cut into the steep hillsides, and there are steep walls along the road – cliff faces. In Colorado, these would be bare rock, but in New Zealand, along the wet west coast the almost vertical rock face is covered in green moss, and ferns. This gives the cliff face a soft appearance (and touch), and makes for a nice aesthetic: a fuzzy blanket of green.

Driving into Fox Glacier Town, it seems much larger, older (70s style houses and buildings) and less cute than Franz Josef. Franz Josef’s setting is more intimate, the valley walls are closer, and it seems much newer with modern buildings.

The Glacier, however is in a more dramatic valley and we can get closer to it than the viewing area at Franz Josef. It has a classic U shaped glacier carved valley, with one side being a tall sheer cliff. The vertical from valley floor to the top of the valley is huge. It seems like thousands a vertical feet to the top, and right above the car park is a long waterfall. Its OMG views again. The water flowing off the glacier is the first that is not clear. It is rather greenish in tint, a grey-green that also reflects the color of the rock and (surprise) the glacier itself has the same greenish hue. The air is full of helicopter noise (at both glaciers) as helicopter tours are obviously very popular.

This landscape is clearly in motion here, as there is a small almost constant rockfall from the rockpile next to a pond in the picture. No one is walking on this rockpile, but stones roll down it as if there were. Some of the pictures I took shows the clear mountain water coming from the valley side meeting the green water of the glacier.

So we left Fox Glacier and went on down the road. Just before the small town of Haast (250 souls) we took the Monroe Beach Walk. This was a spectacular walk through the western coastal rainforest to a small beach that has a fiordland crested penguin colony at the point. We aren’t allowed to get too close to them, but Gen and I did see two of the cute little fellas first coming out of the water, and then going in. I tried to get pictures of them, but they might not show up as much more than a small black dot against the rocks. These penguins are known for their long yellowish-orange eyebrows.

Speaking of rocks the rocks on the beach have some very interesting patterns on them – see the pictures.

On the way in, Gen has a picture of me hugging a truly gigantic Rimu (or is it a Rata or was it the kaharakia – there were all of these kinds, and it was not sure which of the tall trees were. There are many native varieties of tall, native trees.) It was all covered with moss, and it was very soft to the touch. (yep I’m officially a tree hugger now.) These trees are really huge, they aren’t always very tall, but some were very tall, maybe 50 maybe 75 feet, perhaps 100 feet tall, and some had many branches almost like an oak, but not quite. We also saw the Kotukutuku (a deciduous) tree with the pinkish paper like bark, which is the largest fuschia in the world. There were also Kiekie vines and ferns all throughout this forest.

On this walk we crossed a short suspension bridge over a creek. It was really fun because the whole thing sways as you walk across it. It is sort of like trying to get your sea legs under you to try and keep going. It made us laugh.

Once again we have marvel at how lucky we are with the weather. Not too hot, not too cold, not too rainy, not too sunny, although we have had all those conditions. Perhaps this is a good time to visit NZ after all – not too many tourists, and the bugs are not too bad. But speaking of bugs, there are mosquitoes and the nasty sand flies that just wont leave you alone. Sand flies are small biting black flies. They hurt pretty bad when they bite, and worse, the reaction is quite severe. At the beach I got bit quite a few times (and killed several of the little buggers), and the next morning one of the bites on the knuckle of my hand has swollen up so bad it looks like (and feels like) I have hit a wall or something with my fist – all from just one little bite from one little fly. Gen says that in February they can be especially bad, and the book says that they are going to be real bad in Milford Sound.

Back in the rainforest going back to the car, there is a peculiar musty/musky smell in the air….I couldn’t place it, that is the best I can do to describe it. Very unusual. I also took a closeup picture of the “droopy tree” which I think is the Rimu. (But I might be wrong – I will check this later) and sure enough it is a needle tree, an evergreen, (I thought it was a deciduous tree so it may not be the rimu) oh well. I really like it because it is so very unusual.

Also on the way out, there is a funny tree that had a very thin trunk with large holes or pointed arches in it. I had not seen a tree like this so I took pictures. Upon looking at it in profile, it may be that the “thin trunk” is actually a moss or some other growth on an otherwise normal tree. Again, what do I know? It was cool looking though. I also took a good soundbite of the interesting and unusual bird song, including this one bird that made popping noises. I’ll keep that on the digital voice recorder to remind me of the song. (Although the "popping noises" are too low to make out on the DVR.)

It is funny how things happen kind of randomly, we were just driving by and saw the sign by the road, and decided to stop and go look at it and it turned out to be one of the more interesting short walks we have done.

Once back in the car, there were many sand flies that followed us in. I was the mighty sandfly hunter as I mercilessly killed all seven of them with cries of “Die, sandfly die!” to Gen’s laughter.

So New Zealand does not stop. We left Haas, and crossed the very wide Haas River, and started up the pass. Before too long – minutes maybe? -- the grey sky broke into sunny blue sky and huge snow covered peaks rose from the valley precipitously. We are now in the Mt Aspiring National Park, which extends to Wanaka, more than 100 km away. I snapped a lot of pictures of many of these mountains. These mountains rise so steeply and so high from the Haas River floor (there are dramatic cascading waterfalls), that they are super impressive and are very hard to capture in one picture. I can see up up up to tree line, and then up to the tops of snow covered mountains…so incredibly beautiful.

The water in the Haas River is (of course) incredibly clear – it is in New Zealand after all. We stopped at a particularly impressive series of rapids by the side of the road and snapped pictures, I don’t know if they will actually do it justice, as Gen says, have you ever seen that color in a river? I have to admit that I have not…kind of like the aquamarine/green of a Carribean Sea.

As we move further into the interior, and gain altitude, incredibly the air temperature gets warmer and warmer. By the time we are in Wanaka, everyone is wearing shorts and t-shirts. We met up with Nick Frame there, and he said it was 26 C today in Wanaka. I figured it would be colder as we rose in altitude and traveled closer to the south pole, but the opposite is true.

About 50 KM before Wanaka, we are traveling down a relatively wide valley with jagged brand new mountains along the western side. We hit the beginning of Lake Wanaka. We stop at a rest stop that I have lost the name of forever as the POS FGDMFPOS blog has erased who knows how much of the original story and would not let me get it back (ctrl Z did not work, saving the post under a different name did not work, nothing FGDMFPOS worked and it is now gone forever), and I took pictures up the short side of the Lake. The picutres will show you decent wave action and a long amount of Lake looking up the short way from the unknown rest stop. I was trying to describe to you how big these lakes in NZ are. They are huge, many many a snow covered mountain follows it along one side. A bunch of snow falls here as well. To capture the idea of how much snow falls and how tall these mountains are, I have some remnanat of the last sentence the POSGDMF blog didn't delete into lost non-existence forever, about a "ski area there operates all year around," on the tall volcano on the North Island -- that much snow fell on that very tall mountain. (FGDMFPOS Blog!!!). (

Still before arriving at Wanaka at the opposite end of Lake Wanaka, the highway crosses over one ridge to show another of these huge lakes, Lake Hawea, just one short (but tall) ridge line separates Lake Wanaka from Lake Hawea. There are about 20 huge lakes like this in New Zealand.

As we are approaching Wanaka, New Zealand surprises again. Unlike the mountains of the north and west, the landscape here is much more like Colorado. The air is drier, the mountains don’t rise so steeply as the valley floor is higher (although they are still quite dramatic). Gone is the green drapery all over the trees and all the ferns and mosses. The trees are “regular” looking evergreens, and they are occasional, and the landscape is more grasses and brush. Obviously we are on the drier side of the Southern Alps range, even though the sea is probably not even 50 KM away as the bird flies. So the climate is now different, very much like home. Nick Frame will later tell me that it does not rain that much or snow that much here, even though it snows quite a bit in the Southern Alps and on the three small ski areas that are located here in Wanaka.

We arrive in Wanaka on the southern shore of the Lake, a very pretty town of 3500 that looks like a tourist town. The mountains make an impressive view over the big, blue Lake. We meet Nick Frame and have a great meal. Afterwards, we head out to a campground just outside of town in Albert Town and fall to sleep rather quickly.

Until Next Time

Newo Out