May 30-Glacier Hike

Happy Friday!

Finally made it to our rest stop about 8:30 tonight. This is the second night in a row we are staying at a Top 10 Holiday Park. Holiday Parks are in most cities and is a mix of campground units and cabins. Last night we had a bathroom in our own unit, tonight we have to share. Looks as though we are the only one in the unit of five or six cabins because they told Ted to go ahead and use the women’s showers since the men’s isn’t working

This morning we were up early and on the road. Ate cookies for breakfast along the way. We are on our second 24-pack of “Anzac Chocalate Cookies”. Taste a lot like oatmeal cookies with chocolate drizzle on top. Can’t say it’s been the healthiest breakfast, but that’s all we had.

We had a five hour drive from Christchurch down to Fox Glacier for our half day glacier hike. More curvy roads and driving through mountains. Nothing too exciting so I took an hour nap along the way. You wouldn’t believe the number of bridges we had to pass. With that, over 90% of them are one lane bridges. My guess is one lane because they didn’t/wouldn’t need to spend the money to make them two lane with the minimal traffic flow. Either way, lots of one lane narrow bridges, probably hit 50 or more.

We spent our afternoon taking a half day glacier hike across Fox Glacier. Pictures are pretty amazing. Fox Glacier is only one of two of the nearly 3200 glaciers in New Zealand which is actually growing. This glacier is able to grow because of the amount of rainfall it sees each year. Over 200 days a year with approximately 150 inches of rain. This in turn leads to the glacier moving up to 3 feet per day! Luckily, we had a rain free beautiful day! It’s also one of only three glaciers in the world that are in a rain forest.

Met another crew from Ireland today on our hike. Three young lads, likely my age, who were on “Holiday”. When I say Holiday, I guess you could re-phrase that to extended vacation! They were on their fifth month of eight for their around-the-world trip. Unreal…I’m guessing that many Europeans work for a few years after they finish at University to save money to travel abroad for awhile. Seems quite apparent just by the few people we’ve talked to. How sweet would that be!!!

After we finished up there about 5:30, we drove for another three hours to hit our Holiday Park for the evening. Tomorrow we’ll be heading over to Milford Sound for an overnight excursion. It’ll take about five hours to get there. To date, we’ve put on over 800 miles on the two cars we’ve rented. Yikes!

Random Notes:

The other day we had pulled off to take a few photos of the mountains. Trucking along, we noticed a John Deere tractor with a front end loader. Cruising along in the loader, sat a yellow lab, happy as could be. Was hoping we’d be able to catch up and snatch a picture as we passed, but he turned off.

Beginning of the New Zealand Alps
Ice picking our way up the Fox Glacier
CHillin' on the Glacier
Fox Glacier Valley