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Published: March 31st 2013
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I am up, breakfasted and out of the hostel by 9am, despite by bus not being until 9.30am…..just needed to breathe some fresh air! The bus journey is only very short, at 30minutes from Fox to Franz Josef glacier, again with lovely scenery.
Franz Josef feels like a big town after Fox, but with one main street and one back street behind it, in reality I don’t think you could describe it as that! Left my bags in the storeage area at the hostel, grabbed my lunch (prepared yesterday) and headed straight to the DOC office to check the track conditions of the day walk – Alex Knob Track, which I wanted to do. Being a full day hike, I knew that if I didn’t do it today then I wouldn’t have the time. In the DOC office, there was another person ‘Stefan’ from Germany also enquiring about the track. Spying his car keys, I ask him if he is driving to the beginning of the walk (otherwise it’s an hour to walk just to the start). He is, and agrees to give me a lift to the start in what turns out to be a very nice campervan. We
chat away on the journey and end up walking the track together. Stefan is a bio-computer engineer, but has taken a year out of work to travel, so far he spent six months travelling through Asia, and has great stories about travelling through Russia, China, Myanmiar and other countries.
There are some great views of the glacier at the lookout points on the track, which is lucky, because as we near the top the cloud is coming in thick and fast. When we reach the top, it is, quite literally, just in time, as we have a maximum of 5 minutes of admiring the glacier before it completely disappears into the cloud.
After a relaxing hour of lunch at the top we head down, with Stefan nearly falling off the track at one point, due to a bit of path falling away! At the bottom we quickly visit Wombat Lake, just another 20min walk along a track in a different before heading back to the camper, but there was no sign of a wombat anywhere!
I get back to the hostel around 5.30pm, have a lovely hot shower in a clean, warm and airy hostel! I head
into town (walk along the main street), checking out what it has to offer, and enjoy a small cider in a nice bar/restaurant whilst reading my book. I head back to the hostel, cook up the last of my salmon and veg, which I eagerly devour before chilling out.
I am in a 5 bed dorm, which is supposed to be full tonight, but so far there is only a Swiss girl and myself. However at 10pm three girls from Scotland head in, who are spending a year working in Queenstown and are having a few days here. They immeadiatly open a bottle of wine and I am forced to wake up from my sleepy state as I am settling down for bed. The girls are actually very nice however, and we all chat, until they head into town at 11.30pm to find some food. They try and be quiet when they come in at 12.30 but the door is very creaky and they are all in and out to the bathroom etc several times, and when we eventually all get to sleep, I am then awoken again by one of them who is sleep talking….needless to say I
FJ Alex Knob Hike (3)
The view from the top when we reach it! don’t have a restful night’s sleep!
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