Motueka - Franz Josef Glacier

The North Island photo album has now been posted so we hope you enjoyed the pics. It’s all a bit out of sequence now, sorry.

We had gorgeous weather and a fabulous time kayaking up in Abel Tasman national park. It was hard work especially in the morning, battling the high seas. You may think I’m exaggerating but it was seriously choppy. We kayaked out to circle an island which had a lot of seals posing on rocks and playing in the sea not too far from our canoes. Then we had another hard slog around several coves before parking up on a beautiful (desert island style) beach for a lazy lunch/swim (if you’re brave enough). Then we did a more leisurely paddle in the afternoon. We were aching much more than the previous time, but it was definitely worth the pain.

From Motueka we headed down the west coast for a night in Greymouth, a convenient stopover place. The campsite was just off the beach but, as the weather was misbehaving, we only stayed on the beach long enough to skim some stones into the sea and then ran back to the van.

As we left Greymouth we discovered more van trouble. We got a radiator warning light. As the garage we were advised to go to was closed and the light had gone off we decided to drive on to the glaciers as planned. The light kept coming on (very disturbing when driving quiet roads through the mountains in the rain) but we made it. Finally, after much internet activity, we found the radiator tank hiding where you would least expect it to be and it was empty. A litre of water later and the problem was resolved.

The next couple of days were probably our biggest disappointment yet. The glaciers look amazing from a distance but this was all we got. We had booked a heli-hike for the following day. A helicopter was to take us up onto the top of the glacier where we would do some walking through the ice tunnels and seracs. We knew there was a risk it would not happen if it rained and, of course, it bucketed down all night and all morning. They had said we’d be able to swap onto a normal glacier hike if this happened but they were all booked up so we got to do neither. The weather improved enough in the afternoon for us to stop reading books in the van and head out to a track leading right up to Franz Josef glacier. The path was closed as the flood water had made the river bed too dangerous to walk on!!

So we decided to try a similar path out to Fox glacier about 20km away, knowing the path was also likely to be closed and it was....but we went a bit further anyway, like many others, just to get a closer look! Overall we achieved very little in the glacier area, but at least it’s a great reason to come back.