Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers

Heading farther down the coast, we stopped at the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers.  I did the walk to the first, but only halfway to the second as it was too much of a grunt.  Of course, there's always one more hill to climb, so Ralph was not daunted.

Here we start on the long trek to the Franz Josef glacier.

This was as close as you could get.  We never thought the south island would be so cold...here we are in our new fleeces as we didn't bring that kind of gear from home.

Ralph could get much closer to the Fox glacier, than we did to the Franz Josef...I'd already turned back by this time.

 A selfie or??

 It's always amazing how blue glacial ice is.

A photo of the New Zealand Alps.  For the most part, we haven't really seen them because of cloud cover. 

 We were heading into Haast and crossed a high bridge of the canyon.  We had to stop as the rapids below were just amazingly beautiful!  This is called The Gates of Haast.  This looks very much like a painting I did a couple of years back!

 This is the same shot, but with vivid colour...it looks much more like my painting.  The water really was turquoise blue, so must have been coming from a glacier.

 A thistle by the road.

And yet some other wild flowers on our route.

 We stopped to see another waterfall and, in front of it, people had built all these rock-balancing towers.  Interesting, but kind of took away from the natural beauty, we thought.

 Sheep and more sheep but woolen goods of merino wool (and possum, of all things) cost a fortune.  A pair of socks is $35, so that gives you an idea of what a sweater would cost!  As well, lamb is seldom on the menus we have seen (except maybe a rump, or stew, or burger)....venison is seen on the menu at least as often.  The do have deer farms here, but no wild deer.
 

 Lots of beautiful scenery...more cabbage trees.