Glaciers and Sounds

When we woke up at Gillespie Beach just west of Fox Glacier, we went for a quick walk along a very rocky beach with some huge waves & a beautiful view of the mountains before driving back towards Fox Glacier. Apparently in NZ there are

tonnes of glaciers on the mountains, and 2 in particular are supposed to be the most stunning: Franz-Joseph and Fox. On our way there, we were given a spectacular view of Mount Cook in the distance. It's the highest mountain in NZ at ~3750m. For comparison, the highest mountain in the Canadian Rocky's is about 3950m. However because the mountain range is

Our drive interupted by cows

not as big as Canada, Mount Cook stands above and alone making it look all the more impressive.

We decided that because Canada has a lot of ice, seeing one glacier would be enough and made our way to Fox Glacier, which we heard had a much prettier hike and was more visible than Franz-Joseph.

This hike proved to be harder than we thought even though it was only an hour or so return

walk, mainly because Milessa's knees were still sore, so we decided piggy-backing was the way to go. Up and down hills I carried her and then near the end, up a very steep and large hill. We had many people stare and giggle along the way with some cheers to keep going, a money offer to carry someone else, and a few young people feeling embarrassed when they took breaks at the same time as us. It reminded us of longboarding together on the same longboard back in Winnipeg through the Assinaboine Forest - people would just crack up when they saw us tandeming on the longboard. And apparently piggy backing someone who's not your child is just stinkin hilarious. Except that it was less funny, more difficult for us but we didn't want to not see a glacier just because of a little injury. We (ok, just Justin) just kept picturing Rocky climbing the

mountain in Rocky IV, or Samwise carrying Frodo to top of Mount Doom, and then it became easier for a couple seconds. Finally we made it... at the same time as a group of high school German exchange students, and were greeted with a great view of Fox Glacier. Apparently it recedes something like 10-20m per year, yet is still 13 km's long.

On the way back, we remembered that our chilly-bin no longer had ice. We figured having some glacier ice in there would do the trick so we went down to the river and grabbed a couple big chunks of 25000 year old ice and used that to cool the chilly-bin! It was actually so exciting and made us both so unbelievalby happy, even though it sounds lame now that I'm writing it in this blog for people to read who weren't there with us. I Guess maybe it's one of those things you had to be there?

Anyways, filling up with petrol afterwards was painful- $2.36 per liter in Fox Glacier! Which meant that the next 116 km's to Haast cost us $27. That's like a drive from Regina to Weyburn. Ouch.

The next 100 km's towards Wanaka was through a section of hi-way called Haast Pass. In it were many waterfalls and beautiful walks to see. So we

stopped at 3: Fantail Falls, some other falls, and the Blue Pools. The water in these were from glacier and snow melt and so were much too cold to do any swimming in unfortunately. And the Blue Pools were named so because of the striking clear blue colour they were. Brilliant right? Some of the names here are outrageously creative.

After getting through Haast Pass, we stopped at Boundary Creek Reserve to camp for the night. It was supposed to be on a beautiful lake, but it was so windy and rainy we really couldn't see anything. So we played cards in the van, without any flared tempers, and went to sleep with the wind howling and blowing our campervan around.

The next morning we headed off to Wanaka (which is like a smaller Banff (not 'Bamth', as a good friend of mine might spell it...) and realized we needed to book a tour of Milford Sound. I got a little hot chocolate here which cost me 4.85$! For a Tim Hortons very-small-sized cup! Now, it was delicious, but I am looking forward to being able to have coffee for cheap again someday.

The drive from Wanaka to Queenstown was

another stunning bunch of views. It was much more barren here instead of rainforest, maybe something closer to Kamloops, BC. And the mountains again... beautiful. And the highway curves around cliffs that you coudn't go faster than 15 kmh... so glad I was the one driving because being a passenger would be terrifying.

On our way we saw a couple of hitch hikers on the side of the road that we decided pick up. We had already picked a few prior to this, so we'd got a little more comfortable with the idea. These happened to be 2 Americans who were in Wellington for a semester abroad. One was from Connecticut, and the other was from... Washington D.C. I think? Anyways for an hour and a half we had some great converation with those 2 on our way to Te Anau. Once there, we headed just a little bit north towards Milford Sound to a little campground. This was the only campsite we stayed at where fires were allowed, and we soon figured out why. Everything was wet in this area, must rain all the time or something. Milessa tried hard to get one going with some of the damp forest wood and eventually got a bit of a flame going but by that time we were ready for bed so we put it out.

We also washed Milessa's hair with the water from the glacier stream... I found out the next day when we did mine that when she said the water was so cold it hurt her head and made you cringe in pain, she wasn't lying.

We woke up very early the next morning to make our way to Milford Sound. To better understand what it is if you don't already, you might have to

look at a map of it, and then some pictures. It's like a water inlet completely surrounded by extremely high and steep mountains- a fiord, I suppose. That would make sense seeing as it is in Fjordland National Park.

The drive into Milford Sound alone was great. Waterfalls off the mountains everywhere, and huge rocky mountains surrounded us all around. To get into Milford Sound, we had to drive under a mountain called the Homer Saddle. The sound

was completely closed off and only accessable via the ocean or a walking trail until this tunnel was dug out & finished in 1953. The reason they couldn't just make a road around it is because the mountains all connect and wrap around the valley we were in like a wall or a dead end. So, we drove through Homer tunnel, a one lane, 1.2 km long tunnel covered by over 800m of mountain. It was the sketchiest but most amazing little tunnel I've ever seen. I guess it was easier than driving over mountains over 2000m tall with 70 degree cliffs.

Already exhilarated from the drive, we boarded our "Go Orange!" tour boat and began towards the ocean. It might have been the most spectacular and impressive thing we've seen this whole trip. The sheer size, height, and cliffs were incredible. Some rose to over 2000 m above the ocean, and then continued near straight down to the ocean

floor another 1000m. It was like seeing The Lake of the Woods in Ontario on steroids. The driver took us right under some waterfalls, one where a scene from Wolverine was filmed; they were huge and beautiful falls as well.

Neither of us wanted to leave or stop looking at Mitre Peak in the distance of Milford Sound. But we made ourselves drive away. Even harder was entering the Homer tunnel to leave Milford knowing that view of the valley to the ocean, or the towering mountains around us was something we'd probably never see again, or anything like it. So we waited at the entrance of the tunnel a few extra minutes and soaked in the view. After only a minute these exotic birds (Kea) kind of trotted over towards us and then flew right onto our van. They weren't very afraid, and even started tapping on the top windows trying to get our food

in the van! And then, we drove into the tunnel and away from Milford.

Just on the other side was a huge rocky area that felt like a kilometer wide amphitheatre, and at the top was a glacier. I spent an hour climbing around the rocks and boulders towards the glacier there before driving further and seeing a valley that looked very much like Helm's Deep from LOTR, though it wasn't.

That night I found out how cold glacier water felt on your head just like Milessa, but I wimpered a whole lot more than she did. We then fell asleep at Henry Creek Campground before heading off to Queenstown the next morning.

From Milford side.

The Homer Saddle from Milford side. Couldn't belive we were going to drive through this.