We were suited up in our polypro, our waterproof boots, raincoats and rain pants and we were whining about how our raincoats were leaking. All my traveler’s cheques and passport got soaked. So we were amazed at how often we saw people happily strolling in the cold rain hatless, in shorts and flip flops. I guess desert life has made our blood reptilian.
The best part about Franz Josef was our first sighting of some Keas, the world’s only alpine parrot. They are fabulous, mostly olive green with red under their wings and on their rumps. They were flying around calling “Kea!” and looking for trouble. They are notoriously playful and mischievous, and will tear open back packs and tents and grab food out of the hands of unsuspecting tourists. We have seen photos of them in the snow. We also saw a Tomtit, which I would have called a Pied (birder talk for black and white) Butterball.
As we were driving away from Franz Josef, we encountered a road crew that had one lane cleared of a landslide that had covered both lanes of the road sometime in the two hours since we drove over that spot on our way to the glacier.
I was getting pretty miserable about the weather, so we went back to town. This caused the sun to come out, so we decided to go 20 km down the road to the less famous Fox Glacier. I’m sure the sunny weather had something to do with it, but we immediately declared Fox to be way better than Franz Josef. For one thing, the access to Fox is from its side, so you can drive a lot closer to it. The Fox River drains out from under the Glacier into a wide, gravelly valley with steep walls and impressive rock falls. Fox has lots of blue ice visible on its terminus. We rock hopped across a few streams to get closer to it, but when we reached a stream that required wading, Steve went on by himself. He just had to touch the glacier. I watched from about a quarter mile away as he stood under the overhang. The reason people aren’t supposed to approach the glacier without a guide is that the glacier is constantly calving, dropping tons of ice and rocks. Under the glacier is the wrong place to be. Steve was about to take a photo of a stream inside the glacier when a boulder dropped next to him. He took the hint and left without his photo. [Addendum: a month after we were at Fox, I read in the Wellington Post that an Aussie tourist was squashed when Fox Glacier calved on him. His cap was found in the river that drains the glacier. As summer advances, the authorities expect the river will eventually release his body.]
Tuesday we went to Lake Matheson outside of the town of Fox Glacier. It was cloudy, so I knew we wouldn’t be able to replicate the famous photo of Mount Hood reflected in the Lake, but I wanted to see the lake anyway, so Steve went along with it. We got close to a flock of impressively large and colorful New Zealand Pigeons, and saw a Pukeko (Purple Swamp Hen) strolling in a field. The big score was an eel, about two feet long, swimming around and under a deck built over the lake. I have never seen a wild eel, which the Maori call tuna. The eel sort of creeped us out, because it moved so slowly and dreamily.
