Blogs from Fox Glacier, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 14

The glacier gods were with us. Typically weather on the glaciers is cloudy and often raining, but not today. We awoke to a beautiful, almost cloudless day to walk up onto the Fox Glacier. We dressed up warmly (and after a fine flat white), headed out on a 4 hour guided tour - aptly named the "Fox Trot". We were bused to the foot of the glacier on rickety old vehicles which are advertised as "historic buses". It was an hour and half climb up the gorge to reach the glacier through ferns and regenerating temperate rainforest. It was quite a climb (including more than 500 formed steps). It was hard going, but everyone made it up without complaint. From high on the track the view of the glacier and its upper and lower icefalls was ... read more

We woke up early to shower and do some shopping before driving down to Glacier country. There was a sweet little bakery across the street- we picked fresh hot buns and other treats to take south. I picked out a quiche for $3 and an apple strudel for $3, and then grabbed $8 worth of fruit and yogurt- and Cadbury chocolate- at the New World Market. (The chocolate and dairy are so good here!) It took us about 2 hours to cruise to Franz Josef glacier. We looked in the shops, and had a picnic lunch on freezing cold picnic tables before checking in for our guided hike. They layered us in wool socks, boots, Gore-Tex pants and coats, and even hats and mittens before loading us on the bright red bus. We drove to ... read more

There are two large glaciers on the west coast of the south island, huge lumps of ice that terminate in the rain forest. We decided to go on an guided hike on the Fox glacier. We were given boots and crampons to fit onto them before heading up to the glacier. This caused confusion and one guy tried to put his crampons on sharp edges up! Crampons fitted we took them off again and set off on an uphill walk along the side of the glacier, as the access point to the ice was about a third of the way up. This was quite tiring, but luckily turned out to be the most difficult part of the day. The first part of the glacier was really cool. Steps had been carved into the ice from ... read more

I left Queenstown in beautiful weather with the two kids from the hostel and drove to Wanaka on a tiny winding road that ridiculously claimed to be two ways. How people have enough courage (or perhaps false bravado) to attempt this in winter conditions is beyond me. Well actually, if the snow condions on the ski hill were good enough I could be convinced to try some incredibly silly things myself... I nixed the plan to stay in Wanaka due to an oversaturation of ski town mentality. So, after dropping off the ski kids I'd met in the last hostel, I said goodbye to the Xanadu of the ski world and continued driving north. There wasn't much for the next 200 kilometers, but I knew I could at least make it to a small town ... read more

We made our way towards the Fox Glacier, first stopping at Ship Creek. This is a beautiful temperate rainforest walk, with lots of palms, phormiums, ferns, and the tree called the Kahikatea which is New Zealand's tallest native tree, on average 60 metres in height. Then we viewed the rugged beach and sand dunes, whilst the Fantails flew around us. We stopped off at numerous viewpoints before reaching the entrance to the Fox Glacier. Magnificent blue-white razor-sharp ice pinnacles standing on end below the dominating huge mountains, with Mt Tasman in the distant view. Then we travelled on to Franz Josef, to walk to the glacier viewpoint. Slightly different to Fox, but equally impressive. After we decided to watch the The Edge film, incorporating helicopter views of the stunning NZ scenery. This was mainly to shelter ... read more