4 August - Franz Josef - Glacier region

Leaving Greymouth

The heavy rain, thunder and lightening woke us about 5.30am in Greymouth, it sounded like it was never going to stop! We left Greymouth about 8.45am and drove south to Franz Josef, the Glacier Region of the West Coast. It was still raining heavily when we arrived and we managed to check into our hotel early, about 11am.

Franz Josef

We are staying in the Glenfern Villas, about 3k north of the town. This is the best accommodation on this trip so far (all have been great though). We have a one bedroom wooden chalet style villa so it has a lovely spacious lounge, full kitchen and large bathroom and a few extra luxuries like really good bodywash and shampoos with Manuka Honey in them and a free bottle of wine upon arrival, which I picked myself out of the wine cabinet in the reception, a North Island Montana Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon - looking forward to sampling that later - as my first bottle of red wine I had early in the holiday turned out to be Spanish and I thought it was NZ, ooops!

So as it was still raining, we did some laundry, pretty boring for you to read about, but the machines were great and washed and dried in less than an hour! We then headed into town and had a look around the information centre and glacier museum and few shops in town, they were selling Kiwi Willy Wash and Bum Wash, so if anyone wants any let us know!


In the glacier museum there was a section from a Rimu tree, which is native to these parts. The tree was approximately 650 years old when felled in 1965, this is not old by any means some of the trees in the reserve are over 1000 years old but the section was labelled to show certain events in history, which had taken place during its life. Some of the events shown were Captain Cook describes Westland - 1769, Abel Tasman discovers NZ - 1642, Joan of Arc - 1431 and the Main Polynesian migration to NZ - 1345. I guess the age doesn’t seem as significant until an historical timeline is placed on it.

Franz Josef Glacier Viewing

We decided to venture out in the rain (thanks to Caet for the waterproof jacket!) and go out to the walking paths leading to Franz Josef Glacier, we did get occasional patches of blue sky, but still drizzle, and therefore a beautiful rainbow arching all the way across the mountains appeared right before us - we could even see the end of the rainbow but there was no pot of gold!

The road to the Glacier viewing was treacherous as they are resurfacing with river bed sediment, and on the way back, a tour bus had slipped in the bank, not bad or anything but just off the road. About 2km away from the glacier walks was a sign saying that this is where the Glacier was upto in the year 1750, hard to imagine.

After parking up, we followed the walking pathway through the tropical rainforest, which in itself was really pretty and very refreshing to be in with the rain dripping off the various trees. We arrived at the view point and took in our first view of the glacier, even from afar it was very impressive and so we spent a while just taking in the scenery. The pathway to a closer viewpoint was closed today due to flooding but that’s ok as we are hoping to get a lot closer over the next couple of days. We are staying here for 3 nights.



Before returning back to the villa we went a drive to Okarito Lagoon and Lake Mapourika, very pretty and the sun was peeking through the clouds more often by now. Back in the villa we are getting cosy, and the room is really warm now the heating has kicked in. We are going to cook burritos tonight……yum! It is really peaceful here……….

---

---