Days 332-333: Franz Josef

After my break in Nelson it was back onto the road heading down along the west coast. The scenery for the trip was fantastic as we had the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. All these long bus rides include breaks along the way for meals and to use toilets, and one of our stops happened to be at Punakaiki, also known as the Pancake Rocks. The entire circuit past the rocks would take longer than the 15 minutes I had, but I had enough time to walk down and see what they were all about at least.


A few more hours later we finally made it into Franz Josef. Franz Josef isn't even a town, it's just two short streets along the highway. The only reason it's really there is for tourists visiting the Franz Josef glacier which sits in the mountains a short distance away. It was late afternoon by the time my bus got in so I wasn't planning to do much for that day. I checked into my accomodations and went for a short walk down a nearby trail but decided to leave the glacier for the next day. It really is lovely scenery though with all the woods backed by snow-capped mountains, and no tall buildings to spoil the view.


The next day I went to visit the glacier. There are shuttles that take you to the parking lot for the place, but they are $12 each way and I'm cheap, so I just decided to walk. It's about a 5km walk to the parking lot, and then another few kilometers through the woods and through a rocky valley created by the retreating glacier. There's a river running through the valley and it's pretty amazing how much water is coming from the glacier. For safety reasons you can't go all the way up to the glacier, but I followed the path as far as it goes to get a better view.


There were a few other really cool activities offered from Franz Josef. You could do skydiving, or take a helicopter up to drop you off on the glacier and do day hikes over the ice and through glacial tunnels. Unfotunately both of these activities were a bit beyond what I was willing to spend, so I had to be satisfied with just seeing things from afar.