After Milford Sound we drove a few hours north to the town
of Fox Glacier, on the west coast. We
got to the small town of Haast shortly after 7pm and figured it would be our
last chance to get dinner. We headed to the only café we knew about and It
was closed. Uh oh. We went to a store that was a bit large for a
7-11 but definitely not a full super market and thankfully it was still open. They’d stopped serving hot food about 30
minutes earlier so I figured we’d end up with sandwiches. We were both thinking about our night in the
Arctic when we had trouble finding food, though as Jeff reminded me, at least
this time there wasn’t a language barrier. And, as it turned out, there was a
tavern in town. Order and pay for your food,
then watch for your # to appear and pick it up, go to the salad and vegetable
bar, then eat. But at least it was a hot
meal.
The office at our lodging closed at 9:00, a fact we’d
surmised but didn’t confirm until we arrived at about 9:15. We were greeted with an envelope with my name
on it, a key, and info about how to find the room.
Today we viewed 2 glaciers – Fox and Franz Josef. It’s quite unique that New Zealand has
glaciers at this latitude (about 43 degrees South), altitude (less than 2000
meters, maybe lower), and distance from the coast (one sign said the base of
Franz Josef was only 19km from the ocean).
Fascinating geology.
We also went to what can loosely be called a museum where we
saw 4 kiwis. After all, kiwimonster couldn’t
possibly visit NZ without seeing kiwis.
They’re extremely difficult to see in the wild as they’re well
camouflaged and nocturnal, so it made sense to cheat. We also contributed a bit
to the local economy with some souvenir shopping. Fittingly enough, the one traditional cache we found today, Halloween, was in a cemetery.
I’m typing this as we’re watching the sun set from our room
at Punakaiki. It’s a dirty job but
someone has to do it.
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