Friday ( Day 64 ) was wet. It was raining when we woke up and it was raining when we went to bed. It wasn't a hard rain, more like a drizzle but a steady drizzle. If you spent any time outside you got soaked through in a hurry. So we decided not to get wet. Here endith the day.
Saturday couldn't have been a different or better day. The sun was shining and we could see the mountains behind us.
So we packed up made the short trip down the road to Franz Josef Glacier We stopped first at an overview and then drove down to the access point where we could walk out. The trip out and back was around 90 minutes as we could not get any closer than 50 feet from the glacier. The glacier is 12 kilometers long and is 19 kilometers from the Tasman Sea. Despite the fact that it has shrunk considerably over the years it has been growing since 2007 at a growth rate of 70cm per day. However scientists predict it will lose 5 km of it length and 38% of its mass by 2100.
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| View of Franz Josef Glacier |
On our way to Fox Glacier we made a slight detour and stopped in to have a look at Lake Matheson. The lake is also called Reflection Lake as it is well known for its reflected views of Aoraki/Mount Cook and Mount Tasman. The time of day and conditions were not right for us to seen any type of reflection. However, it was a nice little one hour hike out and back to reflection point.
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| Lake Matheson |
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| Kiwi Rod |
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| Trail to Lake Matheson |
The wetlands around the lake supports a lot of birds and we could certainly hear them. The only one that was willing to pose for us was the New Zealand pigeon. Food must be plentiful for them, they are huge.
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| New Zealand Pigeon |
We stopped in the village of Fox Glacier and had lunch. The village with a population of 259 is here mainly to support the tourists visiting the glacier. There is also some farming done in the area. The walk out to the glacier again took about 90 minutes but we could get within 100 meters as this glacier is much more volatile than Franz Josef Glacier.
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| Fox Glacier |
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| Fox Glacier |
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| Glacier reached summit in 1600's |
The drive from Fox Glacier to Haast was pretty interesting but after three hikes we did not have a lot in us. We were not that tired that we couldn't enjoy the scenery as it was pretty spectacular. There was a mixture of farmland, hills and mountains with the occasional view of the coast. We stopped and took pictures at Bruce’s Bay which is about halfway between the glacier and Haast.
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| Beach at Bruce's Bay |
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| Beach at Bruce's Bay |
We also stopped at Knights Point Lookout which gave us view of both the north and south coasts.
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| View from Knights Point |
We made the stop at the lookout a short one as the sandflys were out in force. They are nasty little #$%$#%*s.
When arriving in Haast we expected a larger community as it seemed that way from our maps. However, we found out that Haast has around 300 residents and they are spread over three Haast's. Haast Beach, Haast Junction and Haast Township. The entire Haast region is fairly isolated from the rest of the island and up until 1950 it was even more isolated. That was when the first road came over Haast Pass connecting it with Lake Wanaka and Queenstown. The northern route from Fox Glacier was completed in 1965.
We found a grocery store and a campsite in that order and called it a night. It was another in a line of great days.
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