Tefas - Glacier day

Glacier day

We spent a night at a DOC campsite in Lyell just to have somewhere to stay over the night so we could continue our trip towards the glaciers from Abel Tasman. Here we had our worst sandfly experience in world history and I got restless and went for a walk on my own and wanted to get a good shot of the waterfall. So I climbed it. And then.I fell down. And the only picture I got was this:

It's not even good and wasn't worth the fall..

On our way down to the glaciers we drove through Punakaki and the Pancake rocks. So we stopped to see what the fuzz was all about.

The rocks are a heavily eroded limestone area where the sea goes through the blow holes during high tide. The pancake rocks are created by pressure from hard and soft layers of marine creatures and plants. Pretty great place, people.

We continued our many hour journey towards the Franz Josef glacier.

And after all the small, snirkly roads and high speed limits constantly searching for FMradio we made it to the glacier. We saw info boards about how much smaller the glacier is today than it was 10 years ago and because of this diminution there's only one way of climbing the glacier - a guided tour including a helicopter ride. Yes please. I would love to do that. But for 425 NZD? No thank you. So, we did the only trek we were allowed to do to get as close as we could to the glacier.

We walked 1.5 hours in total and the outlook weren't that good actually BUT the walk to get there was really beautiful and I dropped all my clothes every minute. The glacier was embed in jungle looking plants and greenery and fantastic waterfalls appearing in every angle of the forest. Franz Josef glacier must be one of the most beautiful places I've been to.

After the glacier adventure we went to the Okarito lake to eat lunch and continue our journey to Fox glacier, a less famous glacier an hour south going from Franz.

In the Fox area we started with doing a 40 minute hike around Lake Matheson, a place that gave us swedish summer feelings. We dipped our sandfly attacked feet in the cold water and then we went on to the glacier.

We got up to the top where we witnessed another glacier that works full time melting away. (Isn't it mean to put up this sign in a really steep hill?)

The waterfalls and streams around the glaciers are water coming from the glaciers so we thought we had to taste it. We realized this water is one of the best we've ever tried so when we managed to stop drinking we got in the car, ate too much rice for dinner and fell asleep perfectly squeezed in the car somewhere in the forest holding all my thumbs that the cops wouldn't come and say our camping was illeagal (which it was) and put me in jail.