Fox glacier

I started my trip to Fox glacier early in the morning from Nelson. The distance between these places is only around 500kms but I still needed to travel the whole day in the bus. It might give you a little bit of hint of the landscape the road went through. I could only watch the sceneries in awe.

There's two big touristic glaciers on the West coast of the South island. The Franz Josef glacier is actually spread into more wide area and is more popular among the tourists. I made some early research to help my decision and heard that the scenery in the Fox glacier should be better with more sheer valley and you can actually get more close to the glacier without getting on it. I don't know if this is right since I didn't went to Franz josef but the Fox was indeed impressive. I spend pretty much the whole day walking to get most of the viewpoints.



From Fox village you can also go to lake Matheson which offers a superb reflection of mt Cook and mt Tasman on a calm day. The first is the highest mountain in NZ. I woke up early and was lucky since weather was calm and the lake was really like a mirror showing the upside-down image of the snowy-capped mountains.

From Fox I decided to head straight to Queenstown just for one night, then to Te Anau and to check out the Milford Sound. As the winter might be really good time to go tramping into Abel Tasman national park, it sure isn't the right time trying to do the most of the great walks. Majority of the Milford track is closed due to high avalance risk and there's probably lot of snow on the other tracks as well. I'll go to check the Milford sound probably by cruise tomorrow and then head back to Queenstown and Wanaka to enjoy the snow as it should be enjoyed, snowboarding or skiing.