Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers

In the last 2 days we visited the 2 most famous glaciers on the west coast. It is impressive when you sit on the bus coming from the south and you can basically look left and see the Tasman Sea and look right and see the Southern Alps.

Quite alarming though is the speed with which those glaciers are retreating. This gets really graphic at the Franz Josef glacier (pic no. 3) where the glacier just 4 years ago reached way beyond the point from where we took the pictures. That amounts to the enormous - especially in geological terms - loss of ice of 10 meters per month! Rising global temperatures might have a thing or two to do with that. Locally they translate to more rain than snow, even at the summits which certainly doesn't help the glacier.

In more fun news, we encountered 2 wild Germans with broken wings which we could prep back to live with a couple of beers so they could fly on on their way further south. It was great to have our friends around so we could practice our German a bit - both of us ;)!Read more