In the glacier on west coast

So after mount cook with a vegetation rather dry, I get on the other side of the mountain just on west coast, it is very cool to see how different it is just on the other side of the mountain. The vegetation here is rain forest, very green heaps of huge trees, foam and fern trees everywhere!!

So I stayed 3 days in franz josef to see the glacier around.

The first day I went to see franz josef glacier but we couldn’t get close enough to see the glacier correctly and there was a lot of cloud so I was a bit disappointed. However I did find a trail for a hike going on the hill on the side of the glacier, so I decided to do that tramp before leaving to have a better view of the area.

The next day I went to fox glacier which is 15-30 min away by hitch hiking.

I went to see the glacier but like franz josef the track to get in front of the glacier don’t offer a nice view. But there is some other tracks that offer much better view with almost no one on it. I don’t understand why in both glacier heaps of people go on the track that goes in front of the glacier with a very bad view and almost no one goes on the other track that offer much better view…. Anyone it’s better for me, more quiet!!!

Next to fox glacier there is a small lake that supposed to offer an amazing view over the mountains with a perfect reflection on the lake, however once again, very cloudy so couldn’t see anything, so instead of getting there I just took pictures of the posters in the souvenir shops :) 

And for my last day around I did the big hike I’ve seen the first day to get an awesome view over the glacier, the tracks was very nice. I was expecting to spend 5-6h to get there and back, but I manage to do it in about 4h with a 1h break on top. So that was a shorter day than expected but really cool, still a lot of cloud but a bit less than the other days.

So after that I just went take my bag at the hotel and hitch hike to Hokitika a bit more north, by the time I get there it was raining a lot so didn't see much there, but anyway except “jade stones” I don’t think there is much to see there.

The next day the weather was awful all around so I decided to go directly to Christchurch...