Franz Josef

We have come to the conclusion now that there is absolutely no point in checking the weather as it never does what it's supposed to. Last night we found a cheap glacier valley walking tour to the Franz Josef Glacier so we just booked it and hoped for the best.

For the first time in what feels like forever, we woke to beautiful blue skies. Today was going to be a good day. We had a leisurely breakfast of beans on toast (it's amazing how much I miss toast as we can only make it when we are hooked up to power) followed by a lovely hot shower and then headed out for our tour.

We met our guide for the morning, a very chatty Kiwi called Cliff. To keep things interesting Cliff didn't take us down the traditional path to the Glacier and instead took us into the forest pointing out interesting things like the worlds biggest moss and the worlds biggest daisy. This was all very nice until our next off piste section which took us up a small waterfall. It was very slippery and I definitely slipped a few times, earning what is probably a very deserved nickname of 'liability' from Cliff. In my defence, these so called 'tracks' that we were following were not really tracks at all and he boasted that he was probably the only guide that used them. I wonder why?

At a nice lookout we stopped for a nice cup of tea and were introduced to Hokey Pokey biscuits which were divine! It's kind of a biscuit / cookie, which was soft but also sturdy enough for dunking. Delicious! I was starting to dislike Cliff a little bit after our treacherous journey through the forest but give a girl a cookie and she will forgive most things.

After our tea break we thankfully made our way out of the forest and walked along down one of the glacial rivers towards the Glacier, before following the well trodden path up to the Glacier. It was pretty amazing to see and because we have had a lot of rain recently the Glacier was a beautiful blue colour.

We then wondered back to the car park with a quick stop to dip our hands in the water running from the Glacier just to see how cold it actually was (I don't think I need I need to tell you that it was freezing!)

After saying our farewells to Cliff, we headed back to the van for some lunch and headed over to Lake Matheson for an afternoon walk around the lake. We hadn't really thought about going here however the lady in the i-site said that if you're lucky and the lake is still you get a perfect reflection of the mountains in the lake. She wasn't wrong either. The views were incredible and the reflections were breathtaking. It really is truly beautiful here and I am going to miss being surrounded by mountains, lush green forests and lakes constantly.

After our walk we headed to the small township near the Fox Glacier where we stayed for the evening. Yet again we had to pay for a site as there are no free ones around here however we did get free pumpkin soup which was delicious!Read more