Wanaka and the Glaciers

Wanaka is beauuuuutiful (sorry for sounding like a broken record). We stayed a night on the lake which apart from the attack of the sandfly (you haven’t heard the last of those), you couldn’t have a better spot. Our plan was to head to Fox Glacier, but it took us about 4 hours to get 20km from our campsite as at almost every turn there was another viewpoint/nature trail/river to see, and at each one we’d pile out with our cameras and go exploring. We found ‘blue pools’, rope bridges, more waterfalls, forest walks and crazy pieces of art. This part of NZ is covered in thick, rugged, temperate forest and it’s just beautiful, and so much fun to explore.

We eventually made it to Glacier country. Having been told before we left by almost everyone who’d been that a Glacier walk was a must, and Bro having already been on one was really keen to return, but we’d been given the heads up before we’d left Queenstown that this is now a lot harder than it used to be. Unfortunately over the last 7-8 years the glaciers have retreated significantly due to the warming climate, and a regional increase in rainfall in favour of less snowfall over the Southern Alps. Now you can only actually walk on them via a rather expensive helicopter trip which drops you much higher up. As you can guess this wasn’t in our budget, which I must say I was rather disappointed about. Another wake up call about our ever apparent changing climate.

However, you can walk up close to the terminal face of each glacier via a steep walk up the valley, or to various viewpoints of them. A poor substitute, but still an experience.

So on the first day we took the walk to Fox Glacier (my favourite of all the mints!). It’s startling how much it has retreated according to the photos (so much so that Bro initially didn’t recognise it from his previous visit 10 years ago). It’s still rather impressive, but it all feels a little bitter-sweet as you know there aren’t likely to be many more years where people can view it like that, and perhaps a visit to Fox Glacier won’t be on the menu when my future kids come to NZ one day.

We consoled ourselves by spending an hour in the hot springs in the nearby town of Franz Joseph.

Our attempts to view the Franz Joseph Glacier the following day were thwarted by a serious rain storm. And this wasn’t just any rainstorm, this lasted all day. And all night. Relentlessly….That means without stopping. At all. It sucked. However we did take solace in the fact that we’d rather be stuck in a rainy camper together than sat at home marking. Silver linings.