After an exciting few days in Queenstown, we decided to move on down to the other side of the South Island Alps. We drove through Haast and on to Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers. New Zealand is one of the few places in the world where glaciers come down almost to the sea/ocean (the other place that has this is Finland). This means that the glaciers are accessible to almost everybody and do not require week-long treks to get there. Similar to Finland, the glaciers have carved huge fjords near the ocean.
In Franz Joseph city, we decided to go kayaking on Lake Wanaku. We had seen people kayaking on the glacier lake near Mt. Cook and, as a result, were inspired to do so ourselves. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into! We contacted Ferg's Kayak shop in Franz Joseph and were told that it'd be no problem - beginners would have no difficulty kayaking through the lake. Our guide, Danny, was very very laid back...
We got to the jetty at Lake Wanaku and put on our kayak aprons - it looked very funny - thankfully, I decided not to take photos with our camera! After getting into the kayak, adjusting the rudder pedals and fitting the apron onto the kayak, we had to wait a few minutes for everybody to get ready (we had a Russian, a Canadian, two Australians and a Kiwi along with us) - the sandfleas wasted no time at all getting busy - they inflicted several bites on each one of us... some bites are still in evidence on me a few weeks later!
The lake was beautiful.. a little choppy water and placid streams feeding into the lake. We had to be careful to point our kayaks into the waves otherwise we'd run the risk of getting tipped over (not a very pleasant experience, I'm sure). We were out on the lake for about 3 hours, in which time we got somewhat excited, then somewhat scared that we were in the middle of lake with nobody around us, and then excited again when we went up this creek (see photo to the left).
We could hear several bird calls from the surround forest. Danny explained to us that the Kiwi bird is almost extinct in New Zealand. The kiwis have gone from 5 million 75 years ago to 75,000 today! Quite a sad story, given that the Kiwi is the national bird of New Zealand. Apparently, before human beings came to New Zealand, the island had a gazillion species of birds and almost no animals. The birds evolved greatly without any real threat... the kiwi took this opportunity to evolve into a flightless bird as most of its prey was on the ground. Once humans arrived, they brought with them stoats which started preying on the kiwis. So now, there are big conservation programs under way.
Next morning, we drove down to the Fox glacier to do a heli-hike on the Fox glacier! This was a fantastic experience. I had no idea that glaciers are not just huge blocks of ice but have large streams of water, huge ice caves & tunnels and lots of rock mixed up with the ice. The Fox glacier itself has been retreating but many others in New Zealand have been expanding over the last decade.
Our helicopter ride (our first ever) was amazing. We could see the glacier from on top and also flew by waterfalls and icefalls along the way. It was just a 10-minute flight but was worth the money. We could see streams winding their way down from the glacier to a river & a lake below. We could see forests going by... Make me want to learn flying!
We then landed on the glacier. Our guide then took a pick axe and started carving steps for us in the ice to climb through the glacier. In quite a dead-pan voice, he kept saying that the guides have hacked their feet by accident several times... not funny! We saw ice caves and drank from the crystal clear stream. We tried to avoid falling into the crevasses (successfully, thank god).
So now that we've done our share of adventure sports, we're heading on up to Christchurch for the last part of our New Zealand trip!
-Dev
Dev:
Funny-as I reread your blog, I realize we are literally retracing your steps this week. The family is off to NZ and am looking forward to the bungy jumping in Queenstown and the heliride over the FJ glacier.
Posted by: Ratnesh | Sunday, December 21, 2008 at 05:55 AM