New Zealand Vacation

Saturday, January 27:
Greymouth - Haast

Still rainy and chilly. I started off my day with the second-worst cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted. I think I’ll switch to tea.

We drove more winding mountain roads to Fox Glacier. The Southern Alps is a spine of mountains that run down the west coast of NZ. These are geologically very new, and rugged and abrupt. There was much glacial action down both sides of this ridge, leaving fiords on the coastal side and finger lakes on the landward side. At the base of the glacier, we stopped at the Lake Matheson Café for a BLT sandwich big enough to last a week. The outdoor patio looked over a broad flat mountain valley, as if someone (a glacier, perhaps) had filled the steep valley with sand. It was still, 60 degrees but the sun finally appeared, making lunch lazy and pleasant.

Lake Matheson (Image courtesy Google Maps)

We took a forest walk around Lake Matheson, which is at the base of the Fox Glacier. More Riven-esque scenery Cool temperate rainforest full of ferns and trees with trunks fuzzy with moss. The forests were unnaturally silent; birdsong and insect chatter were for the most part absent, and then unfamiliar when heard in isolation. We climbed a set of winding wooden stairs to the “View-of-Views”, a wooden platform that gazed out at the glacier, and listened to the plaintive call of the aptly-named tui-tui bird.

Trekked on to Haast, where we spent the night.