After Dinner we had another long drive that took us towards the glaciers but to save on money we would do another sleep in the car night along the road. A great road to drive though, and possibly the best sun set we have seen so far on route.
The next day (after what clare considered one of her best nights sleep! As always, in a car!) we headed onward and realised we missed another good stop on route, Jacksons Bay, but oh well cant do them all! Along the road we passed a long beach that people had been building rock towers along the edge of, it looked very cool, so we obviously had to stop and build 1 or 2 mighty towers of our own to leave our mark there. (despite the freezing cold and sandflys galore!!)
Satisfied with our work, we headed to Fox Glacier. We did the short 40 min walk to the glacier wall, it was impressive, and you got in and close. We then headed Gillespies Beach, another of Mikes recommendations! It was volcanic sand, with lots of big rocks and tons of driftwood, they used to dig gold on it, but it was far to windy to spend long on it, so back on the road to Lake Matheson, that was meant have a great view of mount cook and amazing reflections of it across the water but sadly weather was windy so just looked like a big pond! oh well Clare was happy she stayed in the car to get a bit more sleep while I went to check it out, just incase a good picture was to be found! So our last stop was Franz Josef Glacier, which we chose not to do the walk up to the terminal face, but a steep uphill one to get to a good viewpoint, which we did! A completely different view, we could see form here the Glacier coming down the valley, rather than just the immediate face, and read the interesting facts about how they are advancing, a meter a day and even how much further forward they were just a few years ago. It was all good, but having seen a lot and realising it was New Years Eve, we thought we had better get moving North and pitch up for the night!
We drove as far north as we could before it got too late, and stopped at a random town, Hokitika! The first several campsites we stopped at were full! And so we just took one that had a spare tent site left!! It was nothing special at all but did the job! We spent NYE with some good wine, a Canadian couple, that both live in Korea, and that’s where they met! Just before midnight a family from sussex came in too! And that was 09’s NYE!
