After a night in Greymouth I hooked up with my ride from Arthur's pass and continued on South. We drove through towns of variable interest along the West Coast. This part of New Zealand is not highly populated. Greymouth, the largest city around here boasts a population of 13,000. I was already surprised that national highways on this island are narrow two-lane affairs with single-lane bridges. The west coasts tops it off by having bridges where all traffic shares the one lane with freight trains.

The most notable of towns was Okarito which is 15 km off the highway and on the coast. With 18 permanent residents it offers a quiet place to take in the views of the Alps and hike on a nearly deserted beach.

We arrived at our destination, Franz Joseph, in the evening. My Austrian driver insisted I pronounce it "frrannzzz yozeff". The scenery is breathtaking here, although the glacier itself is not visible from the town. This region is highly commercialized: hiking on a glacier is one of NZ's most famous activities. The touristy nature of the place did not appeal to me but it's probably worth it to stay.

The next day I hiked up to Robert's Point which overlooks the glacier. This free and enjoyable walk does not attract a lot of people, but offers great views of the glacier. It starts off winding its way through a subtropical rainforest. As I walked through the lush greenery it was very easy to forget that my goal was to see some rugged alpine terrain. After 3 hours of tramping over moss covered rocks without seeing so much as an ice cube the vegetation opens and offers a splendid view of the glacier.

Today I swallowed my pride and put down 60NZD to get herded around the glacier. After reading about Edmund Hillary's adventures and seeing
"Touching the Void" I wanted to experience first-hand what a glacier was like. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate so I got pretty soaked. Still walking on the ice was an experience.

Well shoot. I wanted to upload some pictures, but unfortunately I just happened to be sitting at a machine that does not have any sort of picture resizer.