South Island adventure: glaciers and rocks

The next day we got up at 6am (well actually we left at 6 - I was up a little after 5) to drive towards the glaciers. I was driving so after a few cups of instant coffee I was feeling more awake. Though going outside and realizing that the sun hadn't even started to rise yet was less pleasing.

The part of the drive that was done in the dark would have been gorgeous had it been lighter outside. However, driving while the sun was rising was very pretty. We stopped twice - once because I ran over a rock and was paranoid that something fell off of the car/we had a flat (neither of which were true, fortunately), the second to take a picture of a lake at dawn. I became much more confident in my driving on this long drive - a good thing, as I was probably driving for six hours that day and it was both dark, foggy, and rainy for the first bit of the drive. The weather on the West Coast was really bizarre. However, the West Coast was pretty cool to see the Tasman. At one point we stopped and there were all of these rocks that people had written on, and we had our first taste of annoying black sandflies.

We finally got to Fox Glacier around 11am. First impression? Not that impressive. I had been thinking that it was going to be like a mountain of ice and I was clearly wrong. It was a bit of ice in between two mountains. We did this short walk to a lookout. It had been raining so the trees were really pretty though. We walked to the outlook of the glacier, but there was risk for flooding so we weren't allowed to go any closer - the massive signs about how people have died ("DON'T BE THE NEXT VICTIM") were pretty convincing. We decided that we'd seen enough of Fox Glacier and decided to continue on, excited that Franz Josef was supposed to be more impressive.

driving on the wrong side of the road/car!

Fox Glacier

the hazards of a glacier

this 2-d man was very informative about the glacier

However, first we decided to do a Lake Matheson walk, which is supposed to give an excellent reflective view of Mount Cook. After getting halfway around the lake, we decided to turn around because it was a cloudy day anyway and we wanted to see Franz Josef - a half hour drive up the road.

what we should have seen

what we did see
(okay, it's not that different but still)

The drive between the glaciers was a winding road on the mountains - really fun to drive! Then we walked 45 minutes to get to 100m from Franz Josef in the pouring rain. Franz Josef was much cooler. And there were tons of ice chunks in the river because it had been raining so much. Super cool. It wasn't really cold outside, but the air at the glaciers was a different kind of cold. I don't really know how to describe it.

We were all excited to go to the grocery store and have some legit dinner. We thought we had a stove, so we bough pizza crust and pizza fixins. Wasn't it a surprise when we got back to the motel and discovered there was no oven! So we made pizza in the microwave. Pretty exciting. We were all in our comfy clothes, eating pizza and tim tams (cookies) and talking about our lives. It was awesome.

my microwave pizza!

it was such a long, exhausting day.
someone took this to make fun of me, but whatever.

The next day, Easter Sunday, was not the greatest day. A bunch of things happened that I won't into detail about, but basically we kind of got caught up in a lie and Nicole wasn't able to make it to church and tensions were high. Finally we got out of the motel and drove towards Greymouth. We stopped in Hokitiki for an average lunch of fish & chips (the low price should have given away that it wasn't.. um, top notch) and then decided to see the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. It was only a half hour north of Greymouth anyway. I don't really remember how the pancake rocks were formed again (something to do with water level and sediment or something?) but they were pretty cool. And seeing the blowholes, which were geyser-like, was awesome too. I'm not really a rock person, but I can appreciate them in small doses.

Pancake rocks!

That night we were limited on food options because we learned that practically everything is shut down on Easter. Grocery stores included. Anyway, we drove to Arthur's Pass, where Beth and Nicole stayed in a hostel and Maddi, Meagan and I decided to sleep in the car and save money. We thought we'd be able to cook in the hostel but the three of us were rudely kicked out (seriously, they threatened calling the cops and pressing charges when we hadn't even protested or anything) so it was sandwiches again! Sleeping in the car wasn't too bad though. I slept in the back so I got to lay flat - albeit in the fetal position the whole night, the back seat isn't that big - but it worked and was worth the money I saved.

(sleeping in the car)

Break time. Only a couple days left to write about!