NZ Day 15 - Fox Glacier to Westport

Call me crazy, but I went for a dawn run at Fox Glacier. It was SO COLD. I can hear you saying "of course it was, you stupid idiot, look at those mountains". But seriously, I thought my fingers were going to freeze off.

Despite all that, I reckon the cold was worth it to see the mountains waking up.

That morning we headed to Lake Matheson. It's a pretty famous lake because it offers an almost perfect reflection of Mount Tasman & Mount Cook on a still day. We were pretty lucky & arrived before the wind picked up too much.

Mount Tasman looks bigger because it's closer, Mount Cook is under cloud in this shot.

We had originally only planned to visit Franz Josef Glacier, but our hostel receptionist had recommended Fox, so we gave it a go. A 30min walk or so got us within 200m of the glacier. It was really weird, I thought it looked a bit like concrete. I also wasn't expecting it to be surrounded by green vegetation. But now I know better.

The landscape on the walk up to the glacier is quite impressive too - look at these near-vertical rock walls.

We stopped off at Franz Josef as well. The surrounds are much more beautiful - almost like a rainforest.

You can just see the black strip down the middle of the glacier - that's the result of a landslip a few weeks ago. Next trip I'm going to save up some money & do a heli-hike or something onto the glacier itself to get more of a feel for it.

We continued heading north up the West Coast, stopping in Hokitika for lunch. We happened to park next to the library :-)

After searching unsuccessfully for some jade jewellery we moved on. The wind picked up, showing us yet again how wild the West Coast can be.

I don't know if these rock formations have a name, but they reminded me very much of the Twelve Apostles in Victoria

Another star attraction on this stretch of road is Pancake Rocks & the Blowholes at Punakaiki. The whole area was being pounded by the water. The noise of the surf hitting the Coast along with the wind and cold spray made the whole experience quite extreme.

The Blowholes were really cool. This is my favourite - the Chimney Pot.

So awesome :-)

Here you can see why they are called Pancake Rocks - the limestone has formed in round discs that look like stacks of pancakes.

Here are the same rocks being smothered by the water from the blowhole. The best thing about this was that the wind was so strong that we all got drenched every time a really big surge came through. It didn't stop us eagerly waiting for the next one though :-)

I could have walked around this area all day, just watching mother nature doing her thing. Check out this rock - now you see it.

Now you don't.

One final shot of that wild coast - I couldn't get enough.