Wanaka to Fox Glacier

To Fox Glacier

Up early because there are places to see on route, it's 265km and we have to check in for our helicopter flight to the Fox Glacier at 4.30pm.

Surprised that the vegetation is so lush on the western coast as we travel. Because population is sparse and fuel stations are few we depart with a full tank and top up on the way. It's a really great drive though, with surprisingly little traffic.

We stop to see Knights Point where the two teams working on the original road construction from North and South met and completed the route north; a monument commemorates this. The view's pretty good, too.

We stop just past Makarora and walk for fifteen minutes or so to see the Blue Pools of glacial water... and very blue they are too. Look, I'm a lapsed physicist and I don't understand this blue glacial water thing. To do with dissolved oxygen I'm led to believe. Have to sort this out.

We arrive at the site just in time to site the van and hotfoot it to the helicopter place. Never been up in a chopper but its a really great big wonderful experience and landing on fox glacier just about tops it all.  Sue was worried given her motion sickness issues but she loved it. Big Smiles all round. Lots of pics of us and fellow adventurers smiling big smiles but those photos don't belong here. How about these?

..and a tiny take-off movie

Day 2 in Fox Glacier

Rain through the night and early morning gives us a welcome lie-in!! We set off late morning for a walk around Lake Matheson which turns out to more than a little surprising. The lake is surrounded by an ancient rain forest: quite amazing. After all, there's a glacier not too far away as we perspire in the humid warmth and lush growth. The still waters reflect the surroundings mountains to give quite a surreal feeling.

After meeting up with a few fellow travellers in the nearby coffee shop and exchanging enthusiastic 'wows' and 'wonderfuls' we head off over to the next valley to Franz Joseph Glacier - which is more than a little confusing because there is a Franz Joseph Glacier, if you see what I mean. Anyway, after a tasty lunch in town and a look around, we do a one and a half hour walk up to the glacier and back. The walk ranks amongst the best we have done on tour. Glacial valley with the blue/white glacier looming menacingly at the top. Brilliant.

Which brings an end to our stay in Fox Glacier (confusing, eh? That'll be the town not the glacier...) and an end to this post, because you don't want to know about washing, meetings, dumping waste water, ironing, emptying the loo... obviously.

'Till the next post.... Bye for now.

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PS: Pure unadulterated water (H2O) absorbs red light (electron energies and all that). Water normally contains dissolved oxygen which scatters the light so that what we see when we look at normal water is light that has not had the red frequencies absorbed by the H2O bonds. Looks white, see. Glacial water contains little or no dissolved oxygen and hence looks blue because most of the red has been absorbed by the water electron bonds and not scattered. How does that sound Mutley? But how does that work in crystalline form - ice?

(Researched by a travelling Doc.(ret) who shall be nameless as is blog policy)