Franz Joseph
11 February 2019
We drove down the west coast of the south island to Franz Joseph which is where you can visit one of NZ’s glaciers. We were lucky as we had a beautiful sunny day and were able to see the glacier as we drove into town. It had been a long drive with a couple of stops along the way to stretch our legs and get something to eat. We decided to stay at the holiday park in town which looked pretty good at first glimpse but on a closer look you find some big issues – overflowing garbage, leaking showers and no propane in the kitchens for starters. Good think it was cheap enough. Anyway, we ended up staying two nights so we could climb to the glacier and watch Super Bowl. Luckily our van is self contained so we were able to cook and do dishes. We spent the afternoon at the Wildlife Park expected to see Kiwi’s, which are very endangered. We spent out $25 each and went into the Kiwi pen. As Kiwi’s are nocturnal, the room is very dark so it makes it very dark to see them. We did see one rummaging around but didn’t get a good look. Rather disappointing for what we spent. There was some interesting information about their Kiwi rehabilitation program and the glaciers, but wished we could have had a better look at a life Kiwi.
To see the glacier, there are several options. You can take a helicopter to the top and hike for a couple of hours ($285 per person), take a helicopter tour ($225 per person), take a walking tour ($45 per person), or just walk up on your own. We chose the free option, walking up on our own. It wasn’t a hard trail but did take us about 1 hr 45 min round trip. You walk along the river and there is information along the way to tell you of the important changes to the glacier which have happened over the past several hundred years. You could see the ice chunks which had fallen away from the glacier in the river as well as a lot of sediment. The rocks are more of the pancake rocks where the layers are clearly visible. We lucked in on the weather as it was a warm, sunny day with not a cloud in the sky. Apparently last week it had been raining so hard they had to cancel all the tours. It made for some great photos and helped our tan. The trail was starting to get busy as we were getting close to the parking lot and by the time, we reached the bottom the parking lot was full of tourists heading up onto the trail. Good think we went early.
Back to the campsite, dumped our hiking gear and headed off to the local pub to watch Super Bowl. The game started at 12:30 pm and there were several Americans also watching the game. We had some beer, some chicken wings, some more beer and more appies before the game was over. While everyone was glad for the win, it was a boring game.
We were up early as it was a very cold night. We were going to make breakfast but animals had gotten into the campsite kitchen overnight and made a mess so we decided to head off and get breakfast along the way to Arrowtown on the outskirts of Queenstown.
