Our time at Fox Glay-see-er was brief and beautiful. Again, the weather was our friend as we were granted clear skies for the two days we stopped by.
It's funny how much an outdoor experience can change depending on the sound. I decided to be all fancy about our accommodation and booked us a cabin instead of a tent site because I wasn't sure how the weather would be and sleeping in a leaky tent turns out to be an experience neither one of us enjoys. The cabin was cheap anyway.
Little cabin 51 with a bit of the Glay-see-er hiding out back there in the distance.
The tourism industry at Fox Glay-see-er is all about selling helicopter rides up to top of the mountain to get the best views and experience the melting ice sheets up close and personal. So the little town of Fox sounds like a heliport from sun up to sun down and the Top 10 we stayed in had the tent sites located opposite a fence from one of the helicopter landing pads. I'm very glad we did not camp there.
As our plans and budget for long term travel do not align with helicopter flights to glay-see-ers, we decided to hire a local driver to shuttle us to the National Park entrance. It was only about a 10 minute ride from town but there wasn't a good way to walk there from town. Narrow twisting roads with no shoulder or sidewalk seemed unhelpful to peds like us.
The shuttle bus driver was awesome. He was an older, retired gentleman and his kiwi accent was so thick, I'm sure I had no idea what he was explaining to us on the trip out there and back. I did catch something about a massive landslide so two of the walks at the park were closed and also they haven't had much snow in the area over the past five years. For $30.00 he dropped us off at the start of the glay-see-er walk and said he'd be back to pick us up in two hours.
Clear skies and a beautiful morning to look at a melty Glay-see-er.
Walking in the valley of the retreating glay-see-er felt like walking on another planet. The fine silt left behind from the massive ice sheets grinding the earth to dust was unlike any environment I'd been in. Except for all the sign posts for idiots to warn of falling rocks and dangerous scenarios if you ignore ALL the warning signs and try and get that real adventurous, close up shot of the melting glay-see-er; I've seen a lot of those signs on our travels. In fact, a couple tourists were killed earlier in the year when they ignored the warning signs, walked where they weren't supposed to be and a piece of the glacier fell on top of them.
Dead.
DON'T SWIM HERE PLEASE. A RIVER SHARK WILL GET YOU!
Anyway, here's what the place looked like:
We walked up the trail on the lower right side of the image. Along the trail you pass sign posts telling you where the glay-see-er used to end. It's retreated way far up the mountain today.
We spent some time sketching up there then made our way back to the parking lot. It turns out we didn't have enough cash for the ride to Lake Matheson and there were no ATMs in town. Ryan negotiated a price for one way fare to Lake Matheson ($13.00, all of our remaining cash) as we could easily walk home from there. Some sidewalks and totally flat.
We walked around the lake and took more pictures and spent some time drawing the mountains.
Seriously, NO CLOUDS!
On our walk home, the super awesome shuttle driver saw us walking and gave us a ride back to town for free! That's Ryan's travel luck, not mine.
The next day we were taking the bus to Greymouth and it looked like this.
No glay-see-er views today friends. And later it rained.
Nick, the driver from the Top 10 was nice enough to give us a ride to the bus stop in the morning. He said sometimes they can get 400mL of rain in an hour (15.7"). There were 23 days of rain in November and it rained the entire month of December, up until the 20th. See how fortunate we were?!
Later, we spent one night in Greymouth, visited Monteith's Brewery and watched the sunset along New Zealand's west coast one last time.
We planned to go to Monteith's early on in our trip however, it was funny because by the time we got to the brewery we had already tried most of the beers they were pouring. The beers we hadn't tried, they weren't pouring. Also tours were $50.00 each so we said Nah.
See the Greymouth.
The next day, we took the TransAlpine from Greymouth (Gray-mouth) to Christchurch to celebrate New Year's Eve. The train was fun and we saw some interesting scenery crossing back over to the east coast of the island. Again, we were fortunate with our travels because earlier that day a camper van crashed into a tourist bus and blocked the entire road across the island through Arthur's Pass. Only trains were getting through in that direction.
Again, we were VERY fortunate to have nice weather and enjoyed our brief stay along the west coast. We have one more story to tell as our time on the south island drew to a close, which Ryan will pick up in the next post.
More soon!