Fox Glacier

We left Punakaiki this morning and headed for Fox Glacier (yes, that's the actual name of the town). We stopped in Franz Josef on the way, to have a look at their glacier too.

See all those little coloured dots? Those are people who are closer to the glacier than we were.
This is the river created by the melting glacier.
And here's a shot of the glacier again. It was quite amazing and we could walk on all those rocks all the way to the base of the glacier, but it started raining so we headed back to the car.
You might have heard about two men who were killed when a part of the glacier fell on them about two months ago? That was this glacier. But they had jumped over the rope and gotten closer than they were meant to.

We got back in the car and drove on to Fox Glacier. We headed straight to our accommodation, Te Weheka Inn, because by now the rain was coming down in bucketloads.

We didn't go very far for the rest of the afternoon because it was dark and pouring with rain. Staying in our room with some magazines was far preferable. Dinner too. And it was a very nice dinner. We were just hoping the weather would improve in the morning for our helicopter flight over the glacier.