Into the wilderness - Wanaka to Fox Glacier Township

Wanaka is a smaller, busier, more upmarket version of Queenstown, but as you drive North, back towards the West coast, the traffic thins out rapidly and soon we pretty much had the road to ourselves…

The road climbs back over the Southern Alps as the Haast Pass Highway, a road that the was only completed in 1962. As we descend to the Valley of the Haast river (the biggest river I have never previously heard of).

We stopped at the township,of Haast (consisting of a public toilet, a cafe and a petrol station), before crossing the huge single track bridge over the Haast river and then onto the costal road up the West coast.

There are no people here. The road is first class, but apart from the odd camper van, solo cyclist and road repair crew, we had the road to ourselves.

There are some big rivers here with long, single lane bridges…

Driving the west coast of NZ is just like driving through a huge botanical garden, filled with tree ferns, palms and old massive trees…

In a few places, the road runs along the coast with some great views,

After three and a half hours on the road, we pulled into Fox Glacier Township (pop.374).

The weather was clear, sunny and warm. We were very lucky to experince the town at its best. Fox Glacier town enjoys, 200+ wet days per year with most of the dry days cloudy.
The prevailing winds bring humid air roaring in from the Tasman sea and deliver, on average, 5 meters of rain per year (Cambridge gets around 500mm). At the foot of the glacier, average rainfall rises to 10 meters per year and on the upper slopes of Mt. Cook this hits between 80-100 meters of snow. That’s why they have glaciers here. All of that snow turns to ice and flows down hill.

After a spot of lunch we drove down to Lake Mathieson, where we took a long walk around the lake and were rewarded with some great views of Mount Tasman, Mount Cook and the Fox Glacier…

Tomorrow we will take a helicopter up onto the glacier and go for a walk.