Day 11 - Fox Glacier, South Westland New Zealand

Today we conquered Fox Glacier!  It is a great feeling of achievement, especially because it was NOT EASY!!!  This was definitely a work out!  The weather was very nice at the base; however, it changed to mist and cold once we got to ice.  Crazy how it went from the mid 80s to under 60 in less than an hour!  We literally were sweating from our hike up through the rainforest, wearing a tank top and shorts.  When we got to the Glacier, it was 3 layers of fleece, hats, and gloves.  In all, the hike was 4 hours. 

90 minutes of our hike was going up over 700 steps through the rainforest.  This was definitely the hardest part of the day, but so rewarding once we made it out onto the ice.  The Glacier was magnificent, I cannot even describe this experience.  Hiking on a HUGE Glacier, bigger than Christchurch!  You know us, it's all about the experiences.  We could not have passed up this opportunity to climb one of the most magnificent glaciers in the world!  (the other one closest in size is located in Franz Joseph, just up the road from here and in Patagonia Argentina)

It took us rougly 5 hours driving to get South to Queenstown, we are dead tired.  The drive was beautiful, passing through small towns every hour or so.  The land is untouched here, literally you could drive hours before seeing another human being.  There are no large conglomerate hotels, restaurants, ect.  You are mostly passing backpacking camps and scenic rest stops. 

The best part of the drive was the 2nd half, winding through the Young Range of the Southern Alps, which had two BEAUTIFUL clear blue lakes - Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea.  They are HUGE, you could mistake them for the ocean if you didn't know better.  The Southern Alps run right up agains the creek beds, making it a picturesque sight.  It almost looks fake. 

We checked into the Sofitel around 10PM tonight and plan to have a nice, long rest before our day starts tomorrow.  The hotel is just beautiful, wait till you see the views from our room.  Check picasa tomorrow. 

We don't have much planned, just dinner reservations, so we will have plenty of time to explore and see what Queenstown has to offer.  So far, so good.  Queenstown looks like a cool place, reminds us of Aspen or Vail Colorado. 

 

Good night my loyal readers...he he he.

Jenn