07th February Fox Glacier - Westport

This morning, cautiously draw back the curtain to check, is it raining or not. Yes, the weather frog had mercy and almost no clouds and clear view of the Fox Glacier.

So we set off to walk to the Fox Glacier View Point. Again, we go through the rainforest, on the left we hear the glacier river rushing, on the left small streams flow into the river from the rainforest. How beautiful. At the end of the path we have a full view of the Fox Glacier together with the morning sun. How great!!

There are also hikes offered to the glacier, but we lack mountaineering experience and the right clothing. So we have to be content with the easy paths and the view from a distance.

On the way back we walk through a moraine landscape that has been taken over by nature since 1790. A narrow path leads us through moss covered stones, trees overgrown with moss and plants, ferns and small streams in between. Simply fantastic.

Then we drove to the Franz Josef Glacier (Ka Roimata o Hine Hukatere). Here too we could only admire the glacier from a distance.

Actually, the Fox and Franz Josef Glacier should be named Victoria and Albert Glacier, because Leonard Harper, who was the first to climb them, gave them these names. But he forgot to register them, so Julius von Haast named the Albert Glacier Franz Josef and the Victoria Glacier was named after Prime Minister Sir William Fox.

The Maori name for the Franz Josef Glacier also has a meaning: Hine Hukatere (which means 'avalanche woman') was a young Maori woman who loved mountaineering and the mountains the most. Her partner, Tawe, was not so skilled in mountaineering, but together with Hine he was ready to climb any peak with her. One day he fell in the Franz Josef Valley and died. Hine's tears, so numerous, flowed into the valley and froze as a reminder of her pain. - Tears of the Avalanche Girl -

We had chosen well to do the two hikes early in the morning, because the sky was closing in and there was not much left to see of the glaciers. Our path also led us north, through a wide plain with many rivers, wide, meandering, green meadows to the Tasman Sea with its wild surf. Again today many unique natural spectacles