Queenstown -> Franz Josef Glacier

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17th Feb 2009
Today we travel 240 miles to Franz Josef Glacier. We start by climbing steeply toward the summit of Mount Cardrona, it seems to take forever and some of the road signs imply that this is not the best route to take in the winter. After driving an hour or so we reach Wanaka situated on Lake Wanaka, this seems to be a tourist resort and is very busy. There are cruise boats on the lake and plenty of people strolling.

Because of the length of todays journey we take plenty of breaks and after a further hour or so we are travelling alongside the Haast river. It is a strange river, broad but very shallow with banks of pebbles either side. We climb down to take some photos of this unusual river. We pass over many bridges on our route north and they are all single track so we have to obey the give way signs. It isn't long before we reach the Tasman Sea on the west coast and it is unspoilt. We take our final break at a Salmon Farm that has a Cafe attached to it. In New Zealand they call plain white coffees 'flat whites', I found out that they were called this because they weren't frothy like Cappucinos. Well we finally arrive at Franz Josef at 5.30pm, I'm pretty tired and cloud has covered the mountains here. We decide to spend the evening relaxing, tomorrow we are going to Greymouth which is only a 100 mile drive so we might visit the glacier in the morning.

We stayed at Bella Vista

A map of our route

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Photos

Haast River
Any taking a picture of the river. It has unusual pebble banks

Lake Wanaka
Cruise Boats on Lake Wanaka