Franz Josef and Fox Glacier

We said our goodbyes to everyone at Adventure Queenstown hostel and left in our red car for the drive to Franz Josef. Luckily the Haast Pass was open. It's the only road that goes to Franz Josef from Queenstown and has recently been closed a few times due to bad weather and a landslide. It's being monitored at the moment, but we were lucky enough for it to be open; the following two days it closed, so we were quite lucky. (Perhaps our bad luck with the dented campervan and the wind has changed!)

We did the two walks up to Franz Josef and Fox Glacier. I preferred seeing the latter, because you could get a lot closer to the ice. The walks didn't take very long- about an hour each, but they were about a 45 minute drive away from one another. I've never seen a glacier. It was crazy to see how much it had retreated up the valley over the pasf few years. I was also surprised by how mild it was outside and how there was this massive body of compressed ice so close to me! It would be cool to go inside as they do walks in the glacier, but it's really expensive! Seeing it from afar was good enough!