Although the day started bright and sunny, by the time we’d ‘broken camp’ and got on the road the clouds were shrouding the mountains – and as we were in the mountains that meant that we were in the clouds. In other words it was raining; which was a pity really because with 6,000 ft peaks all around us I’m sure that the scenery would have been spectacular on a sunny day. Scenery aside there’s not much of interest on the drive north from Wanaka towards the coast – in point of fact, with two notable exceptions there’s not much of anything between Wanaka and Hokitika (420km) where we expect to be tomorrow night. What, I hear you ask, are the two exceptions? I’ll tell you ………..sandflies and glaciers!
I’m not entirely sure why they’re called sandflies. The fact is that that they seem to be perfectly at home just about anywhere on the West Coast of New Zealand, just so long as there are people to bite. Forgive me, but I’m doing the species a bit of a disservice; the fact is that whilst the males are annoying but harmless, the females are never happier than when they’re drawing blood……….any similarity to humankind is, of course, purely natural.
We stopped for our daily constitutional at the Fox Glacier. It’s really peculiar to be able to drive/walk in the space of a few minutes from what is in effect a temperate rainforest to the foot of a glacier, albeit glaciers that shrink year on year – both the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers have receded by about 3km since they were first seen by Captain Cook in the late 18th century. As we stood at the foot of the glacier great lumps of ice about the size of a small car were being washed down the glacial river towards the sea, whilst a man in an enormous, caterpillar tracked, digger was trying to move boulders around the valley bottom in an attempt to channel the river along a particular route. In terms of scale it looked like a Tonka toy trying to move the whole of Chesil Beach – I imagine he must be paid by the hour.
