As we continued our drive down the West Coast, the petrol prices have soared upwards and the petrol stations have got further and further apart. We kept putting off getting a full tank, just topping up a little, in the hope that the next petrol station has to be cheaper... surely. But with no luck, we just succeeded in putting it off until prices reached their pinnacle in the Franz Josef and Fox Glacier area. Doh.
The Glaciers are the main tourist attraction on the West Coast and are serviced by two villages that are very touristy and expensive. Franz Josef village, where we stayed is heaving with accomodation and helicopter companies, and all this is generated by a big lump of ice. What's so amazing about these two glaciers? We were forced to book a glacier hike to find out...
But yet again the weather hampered our plans and we spent a day and a half twiddling our thumbs waiting for the rain to stop and catching up on emails sitting inside an old fashioned bus (an internet cafe with a difference). It bucketed down for 12 hours, stopped for a few hours and then set off all over again for another 12 hour stretch.
Finally on our second evening there was a respite and we drove out to the glacier carpark to get a taste of what we would face the following morning. From the carpark the glacier is still a 45 minute walk down the valley but you can climb a little hill to get a good look at it from a viewing platform. It tumbles 10km down a steep valley from between high mountains and is very dramatic. However, it wasn't until we suddenly made out people at the base of the glacier that we realised its size. It's absolutely huge - the people where just specks beneath it. The upper reaches of the glacier are white but down towards the bottom it turns a moody dark grey colour where it carries huge amounts of rocks that have been gouged out of its path. In the 1700s the glacier was much bigger, filling the entire valley we were now looking across, but it has retreated and advanced many times since then. We left the glacier, feeling humbled and rather daunted by our next day's jaunt.
The morning of our Glacier hike was thankfully sunny and warm as forecast. We got kitted out with boots, crampons and waterproof jackets and were bussed nearer the glacier along with the other 40 people who'd booked on the hike. We weren't expecting such a large group, and one mainly made up of grannies, and began to think that maybe we should have booked on a 4 or 6 hour hike, rather than the 2 hour one that we choose.
However, on the walk to the terminal face, the group was split into three smaller groups on speed and fitness. Somehow we ended up at the rear of Group 1 - that is to say in the position that is meant to be for the most confident people in the fastest group!
The Glaciers in this area are special because a) they are particularly fast moving - Franz Josef moves an average of a metre a day and the fastest flowing parts can move a whopping 8m a day! This means that the routes up onto the glacier are constantly changing and the guides have to re-cut the ice steps every day; b) nowhere else at this latitude do glaciers reach down so close to the sea - the valley sides are covered in temperate rainforest with makes a very surreal background to all the ice.
As we went past the ropes where the 'public' have to stop, we watched a group before us climbing up the near vertical terminal face. It was rather intimidating, but also incredible the way there is a huge mass of ice and then suddenly it stops, with water dripping from overhanging edges, and then there is no ice, just rock and lots of it - all piled up, broken and jumbled where the glacier last decided to drop it.
We only climbed/walked on a fraction of the glacier but got to see deep crevasses, a 'worm hole' and large ice formations, crawl through a little ice tunnel, cross bridges, and get very cold feet after two hours of being on the ice. We realised that a 6 hour hike would not have been for us. The best way to see the glacier is to take a helicopter to the top where pure white snow, blue ice, ice caves and seracs can be seen. But unfortunately that was not to be on our budget.
Once our feet had warmed up we left Franz Josef and continued our southwards journey. On the way out of town we picked up a young German hitcher (and his huge rucksack which rattled noisily all journey - he seemed to be carrying the contents of a kitchen cupboard!) who had been on the Glacier hike with us. I don't think he recognised us without our wooly hats and sunglases, but Darren had a good chat with him about German politics (while Angie stared out of the windscreen and thought about flowers) and he ended up staying in the same hostel as us that night.
Ironically, also staying in the same room as us that night was the American guy, Zak, who had not seemed to understand the concept of books when we were in Taupo. We seem to be following quite a few people around and see the same faces cropping up again and again. Actually, Zak's a nice guy and we had a good chat with him this time. We also roped him into helping us finish a jigsaw puzzle that Angie had started working on at the hostel. It was about 1/4 complete when she started and after Darren's initial dissing of the activity, he was soon completely hooked. We ended up staying up far too late in order to complete it, rather obsessively. Rave on!
The Southern Alps mountains in this area are getting big. We drove past the back end of Mount Cook (Highest point in NZ), so to speak, but didn't actually get to see it because of cloud. Quite glad though, otherwise it might have spoilt it for us when we approach it from the other side later in our trip.
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Franz Josef Hotels
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