From Rainforest to the Glacier

The fact that the phone was still not charging in the morning made Dad quite upset and the best way to cheer him up was to drive over to the glacier and go for walk in the thick rainforest.

Before we went there we had to refuel with a big breakfast though.

We didn't drive straight to the Glacier walk but drove up a little side road where we saw a sign pointing to Glacier Lookout.

There were only a couple of cars there and we started our walk through the thick Rainforest.

It was extremely thick here and in some places you couldn't see more than 2 meters deep into the flora. On our walk we had to descent into a valley and passed lots of little creeks that all fed the river that was draining the Glacier a couple of kilometres up the valley.

Then we had to cross this river over an old suspension bridge, which even Mom enjoyed to walk.
Since we were quite far away from the car now and it wouldn't make sense to walk all the way back, Dad offered to go get the car and meet us further up at the parking area for the actual Glacier walk.
Mom and I continued our walk towards there and we pretty much arrived at the car park at the same time with Dad.

The shocking thing about this Glacier is it's speed. The speed it recedes. It is much quicker than most other glaciers.

In 1895 it was still at the old suspension bridge over that we crossed (with that big river underneath). In 1951 the end of the Glacier had mover about 1.5 km further inland and now it is a further 1.5 km shorter.

To go and see it properly we had to walk up a little path (2.6 return from the car park) to get to a viewing platform from where we could see parts of the still enormous Ice Giant.

Unfortunately visitors are not allowed to go any closer or even onto the Glacier without a guide. If we wanted to put foot onto the Ice shelf itslef we would have to rent a Helicopter to do so. Not today.

After this nice little excursion we headed back to the town of Fox Glacier and rested with a lemonade to come up with plan of what's up next.

We still wanted to do the Kayaking, so we rang the Place in Okarito (where we had passed through yesterday) and booked a trip for the next day, with the condition of the weather being good.

The hiking we had done so far today wasn't enough, and we decided to drive to Lake Matheson to take a walk around it.

This lake, as nearly everything in this part of the country was formed by ice erosion.

A nice walk all in all but it started get cold and after a nice craft beer back at the little cafe we headed back to our Cottage, that we had extended for another night to take a bit of a rest.

Although yesterday's dinner was great we wanted to try some other place. It was called Cook's Saddle and had real nice atmosphere. It was very busy, but the good busy and to my own surprise I ordered a Ceasar's salad with Charcoal Chicken (as it looked so good at the neighbouring table).