Our plans were to have an easy day followed by a long day. With the Saturday weather forecast deteriorating and not wanting to get up at the crack of dawn on Friday to pack the tent we decided to move into one of the small cabins here. So Thursday morning was spent drying the dew off the tent, packing it and moving into the cabin.
Just before lunch we were done and off for the 45 minute walk to the foot of the Franz Josef glacier. This time we hiked from the car park along the wide bed of rubble formed by the river running under the glacier. As we approached the glacier itself we could see the maw of the river which was gushing strongly carrying large chunks of ice from within the glacier. We ate our lunch here taking in the valley and ever present waterfalls around us.
Back at the car we decided to drive to Fox Glacier 20km away to have a quick look around there. We drove to a point where we could see the glacier before returning to the small village to book our guided day hike for today. We also visited a campsite there and decided we’ll move into a cabin there after our day hike.
In the evening as we were settling down we ran into Don and Marie from Freezing Rain who had just arrived and moved into a cabin very near to us with Don’s sister, Sue. Inevitably we all ended up chatting the evening away over bottles of wine – a very nice surprise and end to the day.
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